


Between the Lines

by nuhcoal



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Epilogue, F/F, Life Unexpected AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-12
Updated: 2019-02-25
Packaged: 2019-10-26 14:30:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 31,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17747624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nuhcoal/pseuds/nuhcoal
Summary: The winter, spring, summer and fall following the events of A Thousand Times.Or,A year in the life of Leila Mills, Henry Swan, and their mothers, Regina and Emma.





	1. Winter

****

 

In truth, there had perhaps been no need for Regina to call a town meeting upon the realization that a curse had ever so subtly broken, leaving the town irrevocably redefined, straddling the line between realms and realities. After fielding frantic phone calls (namely from Emma’s awakened, exuberant parents,) she had requested that everyone meet the day after Christmas. But for as much as its residents actually cared about the displacement, they might as well have never acknowledged the change.

And so life, as it often did, carried on with business as usual. Though she had been nothing but a princess-turned-bandit in her former life, the residents of the town (even displaced royalty, like Emma’s parents) looked to her as their unofficial ruler, perhaps conditioned to do so by nature of the curse; she assumed it came down to the blind faith they’d put into her as Mayor for the last several years. As no one had as of yet discovered a way, or a true desire powerful enough to try, to return to the Enchanted Forest or any of its neighboring territories, the people of Storybrooke seemed content, even pleased, to continue their lives uninterrupted.

And Mayor Regina Mills, more than anything, wished to please the people of Storybrooke. Well, first, she wished to please herself, and then Emma Swan, but then yes, the people of Storybrooke came in third.

The opening of the newly remodeled Rabbit Hole was right on schedule for New Year’s Eve, and while Emma had been frazzled down to the last thread of her sanity within merely a week of her worlds colliding, she intended to follow through.  

So, finally, there they were; Regina, perched majestically on the high-backed leather stool across the bar from where Emma maneuvered herself around the center, a long line of drink orders coming to fruition from where she held them in her mind. The crowd inside the building was growing steadily; the Rabbit Hole had long been a favorite of the residents of Storybrooke, and their fondness only seemed to have grown in its absence. It took the full attention of both Emma and Ruby on either end of the bar to accommodate their demands, leaving Regina to delve into the notifications popping up one after another on the screen of her phone.

“What’s going on?” Emma furrowed her brow, nodding softly in the direction of the device absentmindedly as she poured from a nearby tap into a frosted, tilted glass.

Regina grinned, furiously typing the last few words of her reply into the message box before turning the screen around to show its contents to Emma, who had deposited the beer to a guest three seats to Regina’s left, and had since begun measuring liquor into a shaker for her next order. “Graham just sent this.”

Three happy, exuberant faces filled the frame: Henry, who had his little mouth clamped viciously around a burger but with a laugh in his eyes; Leila, red leather jacket draped over one shoulder and her hair falling in loose curls pulled over the other with a bright, excited grin (she had clearly extended her arm to take the picture;) and Graham himself, an arm around each kid and with his tongue stuck out in a silly expression.

“Aw,” Emma cooed softly, her eyes crinkling as she smiled at the sight before clasping the shaker in one hand and tossing its contents rapidly, the sound of the ice clinking inside it causing her to raise her voice. “Shouldn’t Leila have left by now, though?”

It had been the subject of much ire in their household over the last week. In a brand new world where unbridled magic met the life they’d been living without it for sixteen years, Emma and Regina were struggling to find the balance between the powerful teenagers they’d been in a magical realm and the relatively regular women they had become in its absence. Not to mention having a magical teenager of their own, with no true concept of her potential. Every time she’d feel an emotion a little too strongly, they’d lose an appliance, and Regina would demand Emma go to the store to replace it in a fit of her own annoyance.

_ Why can’t you go this time?  _ Emma would say, rolling her eyes as she shrugged a jacket onto her shoulders, keys dangling from one fist as she attempted to pick a fight with one foot already out the door.  _ I can’t go in there and buy another toaster. They’ll think we’re freaks. _

_ We are,  _ Regina would give back just as readily, her arms crossed over a fraying, yellowing book held tightly to her chest as she watched Emma go.  _ And until you can properly make toast for Henry’s breakfast with your own magic, you can be the one to go buy the new toaster while I’m teaching Leila how to control hers. _

Emma returned each evening with whichever toaster, microwave, light bulb, or other accessory that had needed replacing, usually just in time for Leila to climb down the ladder from her attic bedroom, the unofficial magical gathering place of their household, her hair a little frizzy with frustration and effort and her eyes tinted with just the tiniest bit of purple. Regina would descend behind her, some large tome clutched to her chest with one hand and the other grasping each rung of the ladder tightly. Emma would greet her with a kiss, the weight of a decade of unknown waiting burdening her lips. Regina would return it in kind, one palm pressed against Emma’s chest, before striding away and to the kitchen, leaving Emma to follow in her frazzled wake.

And so when Leila had requested to spend New Year’s Eve out with Ace for the evening, with very little progress made on her ability to control her rampant, raging magic, their household had been at odds. Eventually, upon Graham’s insistence that he would love to come to town and spend the night with Henry (a coercion on Emma’s part, Regina was sure,) Regina had relented, if only for the simple reason that with each child’s plans accounted for, she would be free to attend the event at the Rabbit Hole as one of Emma’s Very Important People. And Regina Mills, at any given moment, was particularly fond of special treatment.

“She probably just left. To go god-knows-where on the back of that motorcycle,” Regina shuddered, shaking her head with a tiny roll of her eyes as she drew a long sip of her martini into her mouth. “I don’t like this at all. He’s a tramp.”

“He’s a rover,” Emma shrugged one shoulder, pouring the contents of her shaker through a strainer and into a small glass. She slapped a sprig of thyme between her palms and laid it across the rim of the glass, walked it a few paces to the right, before returning to stand in front of Regina with her arms crossed over her chest. “She’s sixteen and he’s seventeen. He’ll move on eventually and so will she. But he seems nice enough, you know. For now.”

“I’m sure he’s about as nice as the grotesque tattoo on his neck,” Regina murmured, grumbling and low, and Emma simply sighed, rolling her eyes fondly, and then they lit up as a familiar figure slid onto the stool beside Regina. She greeted the newcomer, “Hey! How’s life on the other side of the bar?”

“Dry,” Tinkerbell replied in a harried rush, flipping open the leather-bound menu of craft cocktails that Emma had created specifically for the reopening. “What should I have first?”

“How about the...Satine Spring?” Regina suggested, tilting her head and leaning in to read the menu over Tink’s shoulder; she had simply received a dirty gin martini the moment she’d sat down, per Emma, and so hadn’t even perused the other options. “This one sounds like you; champagne, absinthe, sugar...wait. Emma, this is nothing but a Death in the Afternoon.”

“Hemingway doesn’t have the monopoly on absinthe cocktails,” Emma huffed, her brows furrowing together in annoyance. “Mine’s different. It’s an absinthe  _ rinse,  _ for one thing.”

“And egg whites, for the foam,” Tink observed, nodding her impressed approval as she read along on the menu, her finger tracing over each word. “So it’s a little like a cross between the Death in the Afternoon and a Foaming Fairy?”

“Exactly,” Emma agreed, fueled by the affirmation, cutting her eyes to the side significantly at Regina’s dubious stare. “See? An  _ actual fairy _ thinks I’m right.”

“I didn’t say  _ that _ ,” Tink grinned, closing the menu firmly and sliding it away from her. “Although I do think I resent the immediate assumption that I’ll order the green drink. Fairies are more than just dust and attitude and absinthe, you know.”

“So, what’ll you have?” Emma challenged, squinting one eye and quirking her head softly, and Tink paused within her determination as long as she could before she sighed and shrugged one shoulder in defeat.

“The green drink.”

With an amused, knowing chuckle, Emma poured the green liquid halfway to the brim of a champagne flute before discarding it to build the rest of the drink, and Regina turned more fully to face Tinkerbell with the beginning of a pleading, hesitant smile. “So, speaking of pixie dust…”

“No fucking way,” Tink shook her head vehemently, and as Emma placed the fizzing, foamy, bubbling green drink before her and walked to the other end of the bar to greet new customers, she crossed her arms and leaned away from Regina, just the slightest bit. “We already had this conversation. Twice.”

“You know how volatile underage witches can be,” Regina implored, one finger delicately tracing over and over the rim of her glass absentmindedly. “Trying to teach her without it has been...a nightmare. I’m _so_ out of practice, and I never got to come of age in that realm to practice magic without it. So even _I_ have all this power I’m not accustomed to. I don’t want your dust, I want your...guidance.”

“I’m her fairy godmother, Regina...not yours.”

“No, you’re not.” Regina agreed firmly, passionately. She had her own fairy godmother, and it was definitely not Tinkerbell. But she hadn’t yet been seen in Storybrooke, and in the absence of her guidance, she supposed the next best thing had to be her daughter’s godmother; Regina’s own best friend, in this and any other realm. “But you  _ are _ my best friend. My...only friend, really. And you’re the only other person that’s loved her from day one, with me. Please?”

“Fine,” Tinkerbell relented, as Regina had always known she would. “But...I’m going to have to...make some. Dust. I can’t exactly go to Pixie Hollow and just collect some, can I?”

“Sure you can,” Emma shrugged, arriving at just the right moment to interject once more. Ruby passed behind her quickly with a soft brush to the small of her back to nonverbally announce her presence, and Emma’s eyes widened and drifted towards Regina as casually as she could manage; with the exception of a cool flicker of her eyes towards Ruby’s retreating back, Regina made no acknowledgement of the touch, and Emma breathed a tiny sigh of relief. “Second star to the right, isn’t it?”

"Emma, the champagne!” Ruby called, an exuberant reminder, and the bubble of excitement that rippled through the crowd alerted Regina to the dwindling number of minutes until midnight. She watched Emma and Ruby pop bottle after bottle and pour the overflowing, bubbling liquid rapidly into plastic cups and pass them from the first line of guests and through the crowd to the back. Emma was glowing, and Regina couldn’t take her eyes away.

For this was the woman who had been Regina’s salvation, her undoing, and then her rebirth once more; a love lost across time and space. She had been a princess gone rogue, a chosen home, an ally. A lover. A partner.

And then she’d been gone, orbiting her; dipping in and out of Regina’s universe without warning, revolving around her existence with a wild sort of ferocity Regina had never been able to resist. But they had found one another in the end, as they had always been meant to do. The threads of their lives were irrevocably tangled, and as Regina watched the light behind Emma’s eyes, her hands wrapped around a bottle of champagne as she yanked out its cork, the liquid erupting from its mouth in a stream as exuberant as the energy in the room, Regina caught Emma’s eye and couldn’t help the grin that blossomed over her mouth. She’d spend an eternity, she thought, with the threads of their life running between her fingers, if they somehow continued to tug Emma closer to her.

Emma thrust the bottle into Ruby’s available hands and as the loud, chanting countdown towards midnight began to ring out through the crowd ( _ ten _ ) Emma took a grand leap onto the bartop, swinging her legs over the other side ( _ nine _ ) and hopped lightly onto her feet ( _ eight _ ), rushing down the length of several bar stools ( _ seven _ ) to where Regina had spun around, waiting for her with baited breath.

( _ Six _ ) Emma inhaled deeply through her nose ( _ five _ ), her shoulders relaxing and her eyes crinkling at the corners as she held her hands out ( _ four _ ) for Regina to place her own on top, the first crackle of electricity beginning ( _ three _ ) where their palms met.

“Happy New Year, Regina,” Emma breathed out ( _ two _ ) and Regina sighed.

( _ One. _ ) “Kiss me,” Regina demanded, and so Emma did.

 

\----

 

“Come on,” Regina sat beside a small, scorching hot black cauldron, urging it fervently under her breath, her hands hovering uselessly above the steaming, cloudy liquid. A brilliant, blue bundle of flames held itself suspended between the iron bottom and the floor, warming her feet gently where they were tucked beneath her. She coaxed the potion further in a soft, persistent tone, “Bubble... _ bubble _ …”

“If you’re looking for toil and trouble, they’re downstairs fighting over who gets to choose their post-lesson snack,” Emma appeared suddenly at the top of the ladder, offering Regina a teasing smirk as she threw a large, dilapidated book onto the floor ahead of her before stepping fully into the attic.

“They’re barely going to get  _ dinner _ if I can’t get this potion to brew,” Regina complained, diverting half of her attention onto Emma’s looming stance above her, the other half drawing steady, soft circles with one hand above the surface to stir the potion into a circular pattern of movement. It took more of her own focus than she would have liked, now that Emma had arrived bearing the book she had desired and the promise of the attention she craved, and so she dropped a large wooden spoon into the center of the cauldron; with a quick flick of her wrist, it began stirring on its own in her absence, and she heaved a deep sigh as she lifted herself from the floor to sit primly on the edge of Leila’s bed instead, her legs crossed at the ankles.  

“Are we...feeding them potions now?” Emma mused, tinkering with a pile of crystals on Leila’s desktop and knocking them out of a seemingly intentional formation; Regina’s eyes cut sharply in her direction and with a casual flick of one finger, the stones flew back into place around Emma’s fingers.

“Of course we aren’t,” Regina huffed, rolling her eyes, and Emma noted with a little sigh of relief that the spoon began stirring in the other direction; at least  _ that _ eye roll hadn’t been entirely intended for her. “But I’m starting to realize how much we’re  _ missing  _ here, Emma. We have no potions, no elixirs, no balms…”

Emma simply shrugged as Regina trailed off in deep thought, plopping onto the floor beside the cauldron and across from Regina to warm her feet much in the same way Regina had been before. “We don’t need to live in an apothecary, if you ask me. We live in a world that makes Benadryl and Xanax now. You can  _ literally _ take a chill pill. And maybe...you know, maybe you...should.”

Regina’s eyes flashed, and Emma recoiled under the weight of her gaze. “You’re too good for alchemy now, are you? Because it seems to me like you’ve been mixing elixirs and tinctures for a living in _ this new realm  _ you love to champion. You just get to call it  _ bartending _ and people will throw their money at you for it.”

“Like you haven’t been using your latent magic in  _ your _ career?” Emma snorted, defiant. “Bending people to your will, influencing the world around you?”

“I’m  _ bossy _ .”

“You’re a  _ witch _ .”

Regina inhaled deeply, ignoring her, and the sudden shift in color of the simmering liquid from deep, inky purple to lavender caught her attention instead. It bubbled slowly, steadily, and Regina slid gently onto her knees before the cauldron, an electric pulse thrumming at her fingertips the moment she was within Emma’s immediate space, as it always did. “You’re a witch, too, whether you like it or not. Help me.”

And so she did, without hesitation, simply because Regina demanded it.

With their hands joined above the surface, together, they coaxed the potion from a simmer to a boil, and through the fragrant steam, Emma floated her question softly, reverently. “So, what are we making?”

“It’s a brew of acquisition,” Regina explained, equally quietly. “It’s intended to aid the drinker in their search to...find that which has been lost.”

Emma nodded, absorbing this. “What...has been lost?”

It had been a detail long since revealed to her, but shortly brushed aside, and Regina drew her bottom lip between her teeth as she prepared to exhale it into the space between them. “My sister.”

 

\----

 

It wasn’t until several hours after the potion had been sieved and bottled that Emma found a moment to ask the question that had been gnawing at her all evening. 

Henry and Leila had long since gone to bed, following a night spent playing several games of chess (Leila had destroyed Regina, who had been similarly destroyed by Henry twice previously, but lost only to Emma, whose affinity for battle strategy held no true comparison.) Emma had followed Regina upstairs impatiently as she extinguished every candle and light on the way, peppering kisses against the back of her neck for each darkened room they left behind.

Regina stood before the mirror now, the third night cream in her lineup of her own chosen set of  _ this new realm’s _ elixirs and tonics brushed across her forehead, down her nose, and along the expanse of her neck. She eased it into her skin gently, her eyes meeting Emma’s in the mirror from where she leaned against the doorway, wrapped up in a sweatshirt much too large, barely brushing against legs much too bare to escape Regina’s notice. “What is it?”

“Have you always had a sister?”

If there was the smallest hint of insecurity over not knowing the answer wrapped around the would-be-casual question, well, Regina would spare her the discomfort of acknowledging it.

“I’m not even sure I do,” Regina murmured finally, running her hands under a stream of blisteringly hot water and patting them dry before moving on to dab some sort of gel beneath her eyes with the pad of one finger. “It was something Cora said to me in passing, the day she found about about Leila. ‘The least you could have done was give her away and make it stick, like I did.’”

Emma blanched, and Regina nodded, soldiering on, “ And ‘when I make a mistake, I ensure it’s handled properly.’”

She shook her head sadly, rubbing lotion betweens her palms and over her forearms as she turned her back to the mirror, leaning against the sink as she faced Emma, a grim expression turning down the corners of her mouth. “So, I really don’t know. Could my mother have given up a baby for adoption before she had me?”

“Well, you know what they say about apples and trees,” Emma pointed out, and then cringed at her poor taste; it had been her first thought, but it was much more often her last thought that should be the one she uttered aloud.

“That’s precisely my point,” Regina agreed emphatically, and in the moment her back turned away from Emma to resume her routine, Emma sagged in relief at her stroke of luck that Regina had been too focused to be offended. “I just...can’t let that comment go,  _ because _ of Leila. She was searching for her family her whole life, and then she found us. Maybe, somewhere, I have a sibling that needs  _ us _ to find _ her. _ ”

Several moments of a full sort of silence passed between them, and Emma finally stepped up beside her to the parallel sink, alongside which she now kept her own set of bathroom essentials. She squirted a dab of toothpaste across the bristles of her electric toothbrush, running it under the water briefly before shoving it into one side of her mouth, allowing the vibration to do two minutes’ worth of its own brand of magic as she regarded her reflection with her forehead crinkled in thought. When the bristles stopped moving, she rinsed quickly, replacing the toothbrush onto its charging station just as Regina began brushing her own teeth.

“What makes you so sure she came over to this realm? If she’s even a  _ she. _ Why are you sure it’s a sister?” She inquired, and Regina’s brow furrowed just as her own had as she gave the question some thought. She repeated Emma’s actions, wiped a small washcloth across the countertop to relieve it of the puddles of water Emma had left, before folding it into a neat square and turning off the light so that Emma would follow her into the bedroom, still waiting patiently for her answer.

“You mean, rather than a brother?”

“Yeah,” Emma replied, turning down the corner of the comforter on her side of the bed before sliding beneath it, leaning her head against her hand as she watched Regina continue through the rest of her tasks.

“Well...magical women don’t give birth to boys,” Regina reasoned, her voice even and controlled in that way Emma knew she used when she didn’t want Emma to think she found her incredibly dense; but Emma _wasn’t_ dense, and Regina wasn’t subtle. She plugged her phone into its charger, running her fingers through her hair on one side, and then shrugged out of her robe to reveal a set of sleepwear so delicate and lacy and _tiny_ that it made Emma thank _this_ _new realm_ even harder than she already had.

“Hey, _ I _ did,” she argued around a small, indignant pout as Regina slid into bed beside her, the sheets warming beneath her body like the slow smolder of a dying fire. Emma cozied up to her as desperately as though she actually  _ was _ ; Regina ran hot, and it was by far Emma’s favorite way to burn.

“You barely constitute as a  _ magical woman _ ,” Regina teased; she reached out to tuck a piece of Emma’s hair behind her ear, smirking at the way she flinched away from her touch.

“I do so!” Emma could hardly focus on the rebuttal, what with the way Regina’s fingers were trailing softly down the side of her face, tracing the outline of her lips as she molded them into the shape of her argument. “Even still, I had a boy like it was no issue at all.”

“First of all, you weren’t tapped into your magic when we were in college. Neither of us were. Henry wasn’t conceived using it, surrounding it,  _ because _ of it. Your inability to keep it in your pants doesn’t constitute a magical baby.”

Emma shivered as Regina’s thumb ran firmly along the edge of her bottom lip, their eye contact never wavering. Regina continued, “And second of all, it’s just a feeling I have. Somewhere, in this realm or another, I have a sister. And I’m going to find her. I just haven’t found the right...spell, the trick to making it happen.”

The lines of her face formed and shaped themselves around her frustration, and Emma smoothed them away with her fingers as she let her head fall gently against her pillow, Regina hovering in deep thought above her. There were only a few ways Emma knew to truly distract her when something was bothering her, and it had been her distinct pleasure to spend each night of the week following the soft breaking of Regina’s curse putting that knowledge to good use.

“Well, Madam Mayor,” Emma drawled, catching Regina’s eye significantly before reaching out for her hips and tugging Regina over to straddle her own; in one fell swoop, she ran a singular finger from the nape of Regina’s neck and down her back sharply, eliciting a surprised gasp from the other woman as her back arched into Emma’s touch. “Why don’t you show  _ me _ a magic trick instead?”

“Hmm,” Regina hummed, one hand splayed across Emma’s chest and it was with a shudder that Emma registered the deep purple that burst across her irises as she leaned down, her hips rolling into Emma’s own as their lips met, Regina speaking against them in one exhaled breath. “Such as?”

“You could...make something disappear?” Emma suggested around a hard gulp as Regina’s teeth dragged gently from the underside of her jaw, down her neck, along her collarbone.

“There’s an idea,” Regina cooed, in a voice so soft and intimate Emma felt it reverberate beneath her skin more than she heard it, and as the electric thrumming began once more at the tips of Regina’s fingers, she made them disappear beneath the comforter, stoking her own internal fire as Emma begged her to let it burn.

 

\----

 

It had been two hours since Regina had placed the call, and as she paced the length of her bedroom alone, it occurred to her that she really should have seen this coming.

No amount of money could have paid her to return to the Enchanted Forest now; life in this realm had blossomed in every way she had ever wanted, and she couldn’t conceive of exchanging that life for another, even if it meant she got to keep her loved ones close this time. Leila was perfectly content to stay in any realm that came with the strongest WiFi capability; Henry, of course, begged them almost daily to find some way, some portal, to take them all back to a realm where he could live out his fairy tale in its “proper setting;” Emma had declared that  _ over her dead body _ would they live anywhere that would require her to travel by horse. And as for Regina, she would have been happy to stay exactly where they were, just as long as they were together.

A few months had passed in which the majority of their everyday happenings had focused mainly on learning magic. Leila and Henry were continuously bewildered by their mothers’ lack of interest in their actual lessons; they came home each day with piles of homework, as fall semesters often warranted, and Regina would wave a hand casually in the direction of the stairs to the loft, leaving them to heave heavy sighs and drop their school bags in a heap near the front door, trudging upstairs ahead of her to wait for the newest installment of magic into the ends of their fingers, at the tips of their consciousness.

With the exception of Leila’s excessive grumbling, Henry’s exhausting exuberance, and Emma’s half-hearted assistance, Regina was enjoying every minute of it. They were just an average family; a little outside the bounds of usual or normal, perhaps, but she had seen enough of various worlds to know it could have been worse. And she liked it this way, to be quite honest. She loved the way Henry still asked her to read with him before bed each night. She appreciated every genuine smile Leila sent in her direction, particularly when no one else was looking. She craved each movement of Emma’s hands over her body, each breath exhaled into her ear as night fell and they fell into one another along with it.

But now, there was this, and even though she knew, she really  _ did  _ know she should have seen it coming, she was absolutely panicking.

She had just fallen back into the middle of her mattress, arms spread wide and trying her best to control her breathing, when she heard the slamming of the front door and the littlest, lightest set of footsteps racing up the stairs in her direction.

“Regina?”

It was a voice that hadn’t echoed the halls of her home in years, and as her eyes fluttered closed in time with a deep inhale, she found she couldn’t help the littlest, lightest smile in response.

In here,” Regina called, though she knew that if she had already reached the stairs, then she would know where to find her.

“Woah,” Tinkerbell gasped, pushing the door open slightly, hesitant, and Regina turned her head to absorb the sight of her. She hovered awkwardly in the doorway, seemingly as though she wasn’t quite sure where to place herself, and Regina pushed herself upright with a slight groan and beckoned her inside with one hand. Tink placed one foot over the threshold of the door, leaning into the motion with a cautious grimace, and Regina tilted her head curiously.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“It’s just...weird,” Tink commented, finally stepping fully into the room and nudging the door closed behind her with a soft  _ click _ . “I’m in Cora’s room. It feels like she’s going to burst in here and set me on fire, or something.”

“Well, I wouldn’t put it past her,” Regina commented darkly, and they shared a significant glance; it hadn’t occurred to Regina that the last time Tinkerbell had been there with her, her bedroom would have been Leila’s (well, Henry’s, now; though the two of them had adjusted immediately to the changes in lodging, it was taking her a little more time.) “But this is my bedroom now, so...make yourself comfortable.”

She rose to cross the rest of the space towards the en suite bathroom, noting with private amusement the way Tinkerbell sat gingerly on the very edge of the bed, looking around as though still concerned Cora might suddenly erupt through the closet doors, chasing them away in her most menacing Evil Queen voice.

“It’s strange, isn’t it?” Tink mused, thoughtful, raising her voice to be heard as Regina busied herself with some unclear task from within that very closet. “To live with two distinct sets of memories. Cora in the Enchanted Forest wasn’t even a blip on my radar, but Cora in Storybrooke as a teenager had me shaking in my boots.”

“She’s a living nightmare in every realm,” Regina commented blithely, though she understood quite intimately the phenomenon to which Tink was referring. The perfect example of this was her myriad of feelings about Ruby. In the Enchanted Forest, they had been earnest, genuine allies in a war against an entire generation; at times, they had even been great friends. But here, in  _ this _ realm, she had never been able to even enjoy her presence, a dichotomy which left her at war with only herself and her clashing, rumbling sets of memories and experiences. “But I haven’t heard from her even once since the curse broke, which leads me to believe she won’t know it has until the next time she comes to Storybrooke. Which is to say, hopefully, never.”

“I hear that,” Tinkerbell called out her agreement, and then Regina appeared before her once more, her hands clasped behind her back, biting her lip nervously. “You’re a lot more calm than you were on the phone a few hours ago, by the way. You’ve been alone this whole time?”

Regina nodded. “The kids are at school, and Emma had to go to the Rabbit Hole to meet the beer guy. She had already left when I...when it...well...”

Tinkerbell tilted her head to the side, chancing a glance at whatever Regina had clasped tightly in one hand out of sight. “Regina, what is it?”

Three deep breaths, two false starts, and one long pause later, Regina breathed out, “I’m pregnant.”

The responding sharp gasp with eyes blown wide in astonishment struck a chord in Regina, unheard to the tune of sixteen years, and in her mind’s eye she saw the same Tinkerbell, sitting in the same place, wrapped up in the same school uniform Leila wore each day, absorbing the same words. “You’re _ what _ ?”

“Pregnant,” Regina repeated, the knot in her stomach loosening each time she said it aloud. She brought one hand out from behind her back, her palm extended, cradling a simple white stick. “I’m pregnant.”

“Wow,” Tinkerbell sighed, leaning back on her hands and letting her head drop on her neck. She paused, her brow furrowed in deep thought for several moments before fixing Regina with a severe, yet amused glare and a finger pointed in accusation. “I  _ told _ you we shouldn’t make pixie dust.”

“This isn’t a  _ pixie dust baby _ ,” Regina argued hotly, her arms crossing over her chest in time with her defense. “We have soul magic. We can’t help it.”

“Uh huh,” Tink nodded, skeptical. “Just like Leila wasn’t a  _ pixie dust baby _ either.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Regina retorted curtly; whether she and Emma had perhaps indulged in a little too much pixie dust on either occasion, well, it was none of Tinkerbell’s business.

And perhaps they  _ had _ been a little reckless; logically, she knew that. They had indulged in each other and in their magic far too often to have expected any other outcome. The only defense she could play in her own mind, on repeat, was that she had spent many years believing wholeheartedly that Leila had been, and would be her only baby. They had Leila back, and they had Henry, and that was that. Their family. Balanced, perfect, and whole. Regina had always preferred even numbers, and particularly the number four.

“What did Emma say?” Tink interrupted her train of thought, and Regina realized with a sinking feeling and a startling sort of clarity that she had positively fucked up.

“I...well, she doesn’t know yet,” she admitted with a cringe, dropping heavily onto the seat at her vanity. She had acted purely on instinct, and it probably hadn’t been her best choice.

“How does she not  _ know _ ?” Tink cried, incredulous, her arms splayed wide in disbelief, and Regina recoiled.

“I just took the test this morning!”

“And you called  _ me _ first?”

“I’m pregnant,” Regina explained simply, and noted with private satisfaction that her anxiety unknotted one iota more. “I call _ you  _ when I’m pregnant.”

“Maybe when we were sixteen,” Tink chuckled, amused. It was such a quintessentially  _ Regina _ course of action. “But you have Emma now. You’re not alone anymore. This is her baby too.”

Regina couldn’t help the tiny smile that broke across her face the moment the sentiment left the other woman’s lips.  _ This is her baby too _ .  _ Ours, to keep _ . But quite suddenly, the fading image of  _ their baby  _ flashed before her eyes; impossibly small and bundled and whisked away too quickly, replaced more vibrantly by _ their baby _ , only sixteen years older, still somehow so small and bundled and bright.

Regina’s stomach turned, and she brought one hand up to press against it tightly, the test clenched between her thumb and forefinger with delicate care. Once again, she carried something so little, so precious, so irrevocable. She thought of Leila by contrast; so earnest, so meticulously and gingerly strung together, and yet so much larger than life. How could she stand to make her feel small ever again? This, if anything, would.

Missing her internal crisis entirely, Tinkerbell surged on. “How are you going to tell her?”

Regina struggled to untangle her thoughts from the way they coiled and encircled Leila in her mind, forcing them instead to return to wrapping around her mental image of Emma. “Tell her?”

“Emma,” Tink urged, her forehead wrinkling as Regina sank to the edge of the bed, grappling at the mattress for support. “Your wife?”

“We’re not married,” Regina argued absently, her eyes still focused sternly on her crossed ankles, and finally, Tinkerbell slid her palm across the mattress towards Regina’s, wrapping a hand around her wrist and urging her to meet her imploring gaze.

“Maybe not in this realm,” she conceded, and at her soft tone, Regina looked up and made reluctant eye contact. With a simple jerk of her head, Tink invited her in closer, and they shuffled and maneuvered themselves until they sat in the center of the bed, legs crossed beneath them and knees touching. They were a mirror image of their much younger selves, Regina noted, huddled together in reverent, hushed, contemplative quietude. A glimmer of magic began to thread its way through Regina’s veins, into her very soul, and she felt suddenly lighter than she had in several long hours. Tinkerbell may not have been her fairy godmother, but she suspended Regina’s aching anxiety in a way that made her feel as cradled as she would have been by her own. “Now...how do we ease this for you?”

“I don’t know,” Regina exhaled gently, the words spilling from her as though they had been tugged from somewhere deep inside her by an invisible string. Her head rolled back on her neck in a wide circle, her blood pumping steadily more quickly, more heated with each moment the magic circulated through her being. It was healing, put most simply, but the cerebral kind that pulsed within her, filling her with peace and clarity and freedom. In a world that struggled to soothe mental ailments in the same way it did physical ones, Regina thought faintly and briefly that perhaps this new realm’s therapists would have a run for their money if the rest of the fairies were ever recovered. “It hurts. It aches. Like there’s a void in me that can’t be filled; and I want Leila to fill it, and Henry, and this baby.”

“But they won’t.” Tink guessed,  “Close your eyes.” And without even prompting her, when she held her palms aloft in the space above where their knees touched, Regina placed her hands within her grasp. She sighed as Tinkerbell’s thumbs rubbed firm circles into her palms, the energy shifting and doubling down and redirecting focus entirely there. “Because the void is sixteen years of lost motherhood, and you can’t just shove children into it now and expect that to change.”

“I’m not trying to fill the void by just...making babies,” Regina urged indignantly, the sides of her eyes crinkling in annoyance, though they never opened, and Tinkerbell’s circling thumbs traveled steadily further, up her arms, from side of her neck to her temples; Regina sighed deeply, her wrinkled features smoothing seamlessly as the circling, pulsing thumbprints eased her truth out of her mouth once more. “And I’m not  _ shoving children _ into it either.”

“I know you’re not,” Tink soothed, “And  _ you _ know you’re not. But I needed you to say that out loud so that you could acknowledge it.”

“I’m still as lost as I was when those stories were written about us,” Regina admitted, in a voice so small Tink may not have heard it if not for the way they were currently connected. She smoothed a brow absentmindedly before pressing her thumb directly into the center of Regina’s forehead, eliciting a sharp gasp and a burst of impassioned, desperate speech. “I won’t be able to stand to disappoint her again. Any of them. They’ve lost so much because of me.”

“They’re  _ who they are _ because of you,” Tink corrected her, and she eased up on the pressure enough that Regina opened her eyes, blinking away tears that burned hot and heavy. “Because of what’s happened, you feel like you have to be everything to everyone. And all that anyone ever wants is for you to be  _ you _ .”

“I can’t just be  _ me _ ,” Regina insisted, her head shaking slowly as she swallowed down the lump of emotion climbing its way up her throat; the magic coaxed it higher against her will, threatening to topple over, and with a particularly firm swipe of Tinkerbell’s thumb across the bone beneath her eye, she released one choked sob, heaving a labored, overwhelmed breath. “I lost them all and I gave them all away. How can I ever be good enough for them? For this life? For this family?”

“You saved them,” Tink reminded her, and though Regina’s body released the sobs she’d been holding in for the hours she’d spent panicking alone, she felt oddly serene, each aching movement swallowed up by magic that eased and soothed her distress. “You  _ are _ this family. You’re its living, breathing heartbeat. You’ll always be good enough, Regina, at least for Emma. You were quite literally made for her. Magic made you;  _ this  _ magic coursing through you. This magic made Leila. It crossed realms and connected you to Henry. It created this baby.”

“Do you think I can do this?” Regina whispered, eyes still shut tightly. Tinkerbell smiled softly, quite unseen, and brushed both thumbs beneath the other woman’s eyes until they opened and met her own intent, serious gaze.

“Oh, Regina,” she replied. “I think you can do  _ anything. _ ”

With one last quiet sob released, it was as though the shimmering threads of magic had relieved Regina of each pang of anxiety and worry that had swirled in her belly since early morning before the feeling faded into nothingness. With a shaky hand, she cautiously swiped a lone tear from beneath her eye. “I forgot how good that feels.”

“I imagine Queen Clarion had quite the task relieving your anxiety when you were a child,” Tink supposed apologetically, and Regina nodded around the gentle ache that was her missing godmother.

“Have you ever had to do this for Leila?” Regina inquired, suddenly curious, as she shook off the residual vibration of magic as it exited her veins and poured from her fingertips in thin, golden wisps that dissipated into nothing. She stood cautiously as her head spun the tiniest bit, and deposited the pregnancy test gingerly onto the surface of her vanity amidst the organized chaos of loose makeup and perfume bottles.

“In the two and a half months since the curse broke? No, not really,” Tink chuckled; she stretched her legs across the end of the bed, crossing them at the ankles, as she watched Regina fold several items meticulously from a full laundry basket she’d deposited beside Tinkerbell’s feet. She had brought Regina into a state of peace, and so her immediate reaction, of course, was to fill that state with a new, productive task. “Leila’s been through some things, but she doesn’t really...manifest her stress physically. Like someone else I know.”

Her eyes cut significantly towards Regina, who folded the sleeve of one of Emma’s white v-neck shirts a little more crisply than necessary with a haughty sniff. “But you would?”

"If she needed me to, of course,” Tink confirmed, and Regina breathed a sigh of relief. “But  _ unlike _ someone else I know, Leila has a mother who cares and listens to her. Two of them, in fact. I’m hardly needed, other than to monitor her training and supply her with pixie dust.” She paused thoughtfully, “Speaking of which, is that…”

“Also why I called you? Yes,” Regina confirmed, the strain in her voice evident as she flipped another of Emma’s shirts in on itself to return the seams to the inside, where they belonged. “She goes through it so quickly, and she’ll come of age this summer before we even notice, and I have everything we’ll need to convert your--”

“I swear to Clarion herself, if you make me watch  _ My Sister’s Keeper _ or  _ The Family Stone  _ or _ Stepmom  _ again, you won’t get even a drop of pixie tears to make more dust.”

“Of course not,” Regina scoffed, though she tried fervently to hide the way her brain reeled across her internal database of the saddest movies she’d ever seen. Short of going directly to the tree in Pixie Hollow (and with no way to get there or communicate between realms,) their most reasonable option had been to invoke as many tears from Tinkerbell as they possibly could. She’d spent several afternoons-turned-evenings bundled up beside Regina on the couch, enraptured by the fiction squeezing her wild, frenzied, gigantic fairy emotions. Each tear spilled and dropped into the little jars Regina kept for exactly this purpose multiplied like rainwater, to be stored and then blended with a little tapioca maltodextrin until they became a fine powder, helped along by just enough of Tinkerbell’s own magic until it shimmered, glittering and gold. Regina had been consumed, saved, and enamored by magic for as long as she could remember, but it was nothing compared to the way she felt in this new realm about  _ science.  _ “I have a better idea.”

And so when Emma arrived home much later in the afternoon, brushing the last snowflakes of the season from her shoulders as she discarded her jacket, she was not surprised to hear her children chattering away from within the kitchen; to see the dim, ethereal, electronic glow of the movie screen as she turned the corner into the family room; to watch Regina, her head tilting sadly onto Tinkerbell’s shoulder as the most gut-wrenching scene of  _ Titanic  _ played out before them.

“ _ I’ll never let go, Jack _ ,” a heartbroken Kate Winslet murmured on screen, and Emma flinched at the speed with which Tinkerbell launched the remote into an adjacent wall in her fury.

“But you  _ just let go _ !” She fumed, a lone, angry tear spilling down her cheek, and without reply, Regina hummed her agreement as she reached out absentmindedly to catch it in the tiny jar she held aloft absently. It split in two the moment it hit the glass bottom, rippling and popping as each new tear multiplied. “She let him go! He could have  _ fit _ with her on that door.”

“This is what you do?” Emma blurted suddenly, drawing the attention of both women briefly, though both turned back to the movie just as quickly. Emma noted the long-forgotten mugs of tea in their hands, and automatically crossed over to a small corner bar where she found a half-empty bottle of wine, the cork neatly pushed back in. “You watch the saddest movies in existence to make her cry out of  _ anger _ ?”

“The day you can explain the inner workings of Tinkerbell’s mind to me, you’ll be handsomely rewarded,” Regina teased, though she still faced forward, and Tinkerbell huffed in indignation, both at the remark and the subtle, casual flirting of her friends.

Emma chuckled, pouring with a practiced hand into the deep bowls of two crystal, long-stemmed glasses, and walked them carefully across the lush, cream-colored carpet to hand them over the back of the couch to each woman wordlessly. Tink accepted her own equally carefully, throwing back the least dignified swig Emma thought she’d ever encountered. Regina, by contrast, sipped her wine as smoothly and elegantly as she ever did anything.

Until, of course, the moment she spat it back into her glass in a panic as though Emma had poisoned it.

“What’s wrong?” Emma asked, accompanied by a head tilt so simultaneously confused and adorable that Regina found some part of her wanted to squeeze the very breath out of Emma.

“Nothing,” Regina assured her, pressing a hand to her flushed forehead as she gulped so audibly even Tinkerbell turned to give her a knowing, amused look.

“I’ll leave you two to it,” she announced loudly, jumping up and clapping Emma on the shoulder it some sort of apologetic yet congratulatory gesture Emma didn’t quite comprehend. She flitted out of the space as quickly and effortlessly as though she’d regained her wings, and Regina patted the space she’d vacated gently.  

“Sit down, darling.”

 


	2. Spring

Regina, historically speaking, preferred a suite in any iteration of the word: in hotels, certain arrangements of instruments in classical music, the applications on her computer; the sense of comfort that it brought her when everything worked so flawlessly in tandem could hardly be matched anywhere else. It stood to reason that the trend would follow when it came to sports.

“We’re not getting a _luxury box_ ,” Emma had practically spat the words back at her like they were somehow dirty, her eyes blown wide, incredulous. “That’s not how you watch baseball.”

“I don’t see why not,” Regina had argued, pointed and irritated, as she swung open the cabinet doors a little too harshly. “This is a special occasion, a new family tradition. We should all be comfortable.” She glared at the noticeably empty shelf; her lack of control over even the simplest situations was slowly beginning to boil her blood. “And since you’re dead set against _anything_ luxurious, perhaps emptying the dishwasher every now and then would be more satisfying for you.” She continued, not sure what was actually fueling her tirade, but Emma _never_ emptied it and she was so tired of doing and being everything for everyone, on top of growing a tiny human. “Besides, we’ll take up an entire row if we do this your way, and we’ll all be on top of each other.”

“Then we’ll take up an entire row,” Emma had shrugged, nonplussed, and Regina’s fingers curled in annoyance around the handle of the dishwasher against her will. “I don’t care if we take up six, but they’ll be on the third base line like they’re supposed to be.”

Regina had seethed, “You’re welcome to handle the arrangements from here on out, _Your Highness_ ,” before vanishing dramatically within a cloud of velvety, inky purple.

“ _I’m not a Princess here,_ ” Emma had argued to no one in particular, suddenly quite cross, and with a few purposeful, loud movements, began to unload the dishwasher despite her nearly irrepressible urge to rail against Regina’s demands. She may have been stubborn, but the woman she loved was pregnant, and Emma wasn’t _that_ stupid.

Two weeks later, the twelve-piece family set found themselves exactly where Emma had predicted they would be, and Henry, for one, could barely contain his excitement.

“Dad, do you really think I can catch a foul ball this time? It’s the _one_ thing I haven’t been able to do,” he called over his shoulder as he entered their row (right on the third base line) ahead of Graham, fueled by sheer excitement and anticipation.

“Of course you can, sweetie,” Regina interrupted before Graham could answer. She adjusted her legs to the side to let them pass, tugging the bundle nestled on her lap closer with one arm. “I know you can! I feel it in my bones.”

Henry turned quickly with skeptical eyes as he reached for Roland’s floundering little fist; he bounced happily in place in Regina’s lap, drawing Henry’s finger into his mouth and earning a disgusted groan in return. “Babies are _gross_ . And _no_ , not like, like _that_ , I want to catch one the normal way.”

He flopped into a seat two away from her (a significant enough distance from the possibility of more unwarranted drool, she noted) and Regina laughed as the baby planted a slobbering kiss to her mouth. “Magic _is_ normal, dear.”

“We come bearing gifts!” Emma shouted from the stairs, Leila trailing behind her. They were still nearly two rows behind their seats, various trays of food and drinks littering their arms as they struggled to maneuver through the tight space between strangers’ legs. “Who’s hungry?”

Regina rolled her eyes as Emma fumbled across all of them and then spun around in place, trying to find room for everything she’d brought. “If only we’d have had a space to ourselves.”

“Yeah, but this is way better.” Emma argued, her tone definitive and unwavering. “You can see the whole stadium from here.”

“I, for one, wouldn’t have minded not having to make the trek up for concessions…” Leila planted herself into the seat firmly between her mothers and shared a knowing smirk with Regina, who subtly winked in response. _At least someone was on her side._

“Leila, don’t start, you’re fine,” Emma huffed, dropping the cardboard box full of stadium snacks onto her chair as she began to pass things down like her family was its own personal assembly line. “We’re all fine, and this is a beautiful day to watch the Sox kick some Yankee ass!”

"Don’t say ‘ass,’” Henry called absently in perfect time with his sister, and Regina rolled her eyes once again.

“Robin, one for you,” Emma passed a cold beer in a plastic cup into Regina’s hand and down the line to the end of the row. “Graham, here you go, Leila’s Coke, Henry’s root beer, Marian, your bottle of water...Regina, here’s your Sprite,” Emma finally nestled herself into her own seat, cradling her two personal beers in her lap. “And you two beautiful blondes are for me.”

“You’re having two beers?” Graham leaned over to call to Emma, incredulous.

“Hey, I’m drinking for two now,” Emma defended herself under the weight of his accusatory yet amused gaze, setting one of the beers into her cup holder to hold the other between her palms.

“And _she’s_ eating for two,” Leila justified for Regina’s sake as she reached into the box now settled on her lap for her mother’s nachos: a double order, covered in jalapenos with extra cheese. Regina accepted them happily as Roland’s mother tugged him into her own arms from the chair on Regina’s opposite side.

They had, in fact, taken up nearly an entire row by the time all of the tickets had been purchased and the trip had been arranged. It was a long weekend in Boston for most of them; Robin and Marian were in town on business (she had, as it turned out, worked in his father’s office in Spain and become Robin’s partner in Paris in more ways than one.) It never took long once a plan formed for it to take off beyond their control, and before they knew it, they had been joined by—

“Where are we sitting?” David queried joyously from the other end of the (mercifully empty) row, his arms as loaded with concessions as Emma’s had just been.

“Ruby and Tink are here next to me, and you guys are next to them,” she explained, indicating the last four chairs that belonged to their group, and he settled in happily with Mary Margaret by his side.

“Hey, Grandpa!” Leila waved, greeting them a little too loudly, and as Regina turned her head to smile warmly in their direction, Leila snuck a particularly well-endowed stack of chips from her bowl of nachos.

“I saw Ruby by the bar,” Mary Margaret noted, leaning over David towards Emma and Regina, who had both leaned similarly in her direction. “I don’t know where Tink is, though.”

Emma nodded, accepting this, and within a few minutes her friends had settled in alongside her, completing their rather large, strange family outing. Her heart swelled as her eyes swept from one end of their row to the other, absorbing every laugh, smile, and dynamic among those she loved most in the world.

In this world and another, they had been her family both destined and chosen. In the Enchanted Forest, Graham had been her closest confidant when she’d run away from castle life, her partner in building a secluded cottage just outside of her father’s kingdom as an escape; it was the first home she had ever shared with Regina. It had been Ruby who’d curled protectively there around Regina during Emma’s every absence, the big bad wolf of the villagers’ nightmares who had shielded her from harm at Emma’s request. It had been Robin who’d met her at the edge of war; Tinkerbell who had hovered over them all, their constant, unwavering guardian.

And then Regina had cursed them to another realm, irrevocably changing the course of their lives, and yet leaving them so tightly threaded together. It seemed impossible that sixteen years previously, the very same people had run amok through an Enchanted Forest together that were now seated in a neat, precise row at a baseball game; that both sets of memories somehow blended into a lifetime that made perfect sense. It seemed unlikely that she could be afforded the privilege to raise two (three) bright, wonderful children in a world that provided them with boundless opportunities sans the pressure of royalty; that the daughter of the Swan King could be just an ordinary bartender in this realm.

Yes, Emma thought as she watched the baby pass from Marian’s arms, over Regina’s lap and into Leila’s, this felt right. She noticed the way her daughter’s face lit up with joy at the way Roland fell face-forward into her chest, rubbing his nose against her shirt. She noticed, in particular, the subtle sigh of relief that escaped Regina as she watched them, too.

“It’s so cute,” Leila breathed happily, tossing her hair over one shoulder so he was less likely to tug on it. “Can we keep it?”

“I’ll want that back,” Robin replied, teasing, and Marian rolled her eyes.

“If you were as excited by him at two in the morning as you are at two in the afternoon, your argument might hold up,” she commented, sharing with Regina a knowing glower. “Men.”

“Can’t relate,” Emma shrugged, ignoring the piece of popcorn Robin threw half-heartedly at her head; he was too far from her to aim properly, anyway. “Plus, Graham liked Henry all the time.”

“I never got my hands on that baby,” Graham disagreed, raising his voice as the noise level rose around them. He leaned back and stretched his arm across the back of Marian’s seat as he explained, “He lived in a house with four twenty-one-year-old girls.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Emma grumbled. She slipped her second beer into its emptied companion, “Anyway. The point is, Leila, you’re going to have one in like, five months. And she’ll be cuter.”

“You're having a girl?” Marian squealed, and Regina’s eyes gleamed as she nodded her confirmation.

“Good thing, too,” Henry piped up, shoveling popcorn from Robin’s bag into his mouth. “I’m the boy.”

“You’re the dork,” Leila teased him, lifting the baby beneath his arms to bounce him up and down against her knees. She sighed happily. “I love baseball.”

Henry shook his head, rolling his eyes so deeply Regina had to bite her lip around a puffed breath of laughter. “You’re not even watching the game.”

“No one’s watching the game,” she argued, gesturing wildly at the way Graham was watching the cotton candy seller make her way closer to them, Robin was watching Marian answer an email, David and Mary Margaret were watching Ruby and Tinkerbell argue with the Yankees fans in the row behind them, and Regina was watching Emma plop a nacho into her mouth. “That’s not the point of coming here.”

“Well, that’s stupid,” he huffed, crossing his arms in frustration, made more awkward by the glove on his left hand. “We can do all this stuff at home. There’s nachos and beer there.” His nose crinkled as he uttered the word ‘beer;’ Emma had long since performed her favorite parenting trick on Henry, and ever since that one sip, he had treated even the word itself like it was laced with pure garbage.

“Not Fenway beer,” Emma replied, and Ruby turned her attention briefly from her argument to clink her plastic cup against Emma’s in a toast of agreement.

 

\----

 

It took a further three innings for Leila to decide that she did not, in fact, love baseball.

Regina had long since abandoned any hope of following the game and had discreetly pulled a small electronic book tablet from her purse, indulging quietly in whatever fantasy series she and Henry had recently started reading together. On her other side, Emma and Ruby were, by contrast, actually watching what was going on, while Tinkerbell had Mary Margaret and David enraptured by telling them a long-forgotten piece of fairy lore from another realm, another time. Leila strained briefly to attempt to listen, but ultimately, she felt that she spent quite enough time with fairy dust glittering against her palms, stories and ideals swirling around her head to attempt to complete an education she’d never anticipated needing to cram in before her seventeenth birthday.

“I’m gonna go for more nachos,” she announced suddenly, loudly, startling both her mothers simultaneously as she jumped up from her seat. “Does anyone need anything?”

“A hot dog,” Henry replied immediately while reaching into the bottom of Robin’s nearly empty bag of popcorn. “Two hot dogs?”

“Henry, come on,” Emma complained, shooting him a withering, reproachful look across the other women in her family. “You’ve been eating non-stop all day, you’ll be sick.”

“He’s a growing boy,” Robin interjected suddenly, and he stood to exit the row ahead of Leila. “Let him live a little, it’s a big game.”

“What a great parenting philosophy,” Emma bit out, and even Regina turned in surprise at the harsh tone in her voice. It had always been so much easier between Emma and Robin than with Regina and Ruby; Regina had always thought perhaps Emma was just the more emotionally developed, capable member of their relationship when managing friendly relationships with former lovers, but as she noted the fire in Emma’s eyes as she regarded Robin with disdain, a fire long-dormant and vaguely adventurous, Regina allowed the pieces to fall into place.

“Emma,” she murmured quietly, leaning in across Leila’s empty seat to yank her attention away from Robin, who simply stared back at Emma with a quirked, challenging brow. “What is your problem?”

“He thinks he’s right about everything,” Emma hissed under her breath, indignant, and jerked to point an accusatory finger towards his looming figure at the end of the row, still waiting for Leila, who hovered in curiosity just beside her whispering parents. “If it’s not one thing, it’s another. First I didn’t ‘grip my sword in the right place, and then I couldn’t track that stupid fat bear accurately enough, and now it’s my --”

“That was sixteen years ago!” Regina snarled, her patience running thin. It was one thing for Emma to spar with Robin as a teenager when their fate necessitated it in another life; it was quite another to do it over junk food in this one. “That was an entire _realm_ ago. Can’t you let it go?”

 “Fine,” Emma’s eyes flashed, and she settled back into her seat, finally losing Leila’s interest entirely, which prompted the girl to file out of their row behind Robin, whom she dragged towards the concessions with gusto. “But why don’t you tell me how you like _letting it go_ the next time Ruby breathes in your direction?”

“That particular feud is old news, my friend,” Ruby interjected with a note of playful jest in her voice, meeting Regina’s gaze with a smile of shared, soft understanding. She broke into a grin as she focused more fully on Emma, who had frowned in confusion. “Imagine two capable, hot, badass women like Regina and me having some pointless, ongoing tension over _you_? I don’t know how we didn’t know we were cursed in the first place.”

“Honestly, darling,” Regina began to tease her, but held her tongue at the look of genuine hurt that flashed through Emma’s eyes. “Is it that awful not to be the subject of everyone’s desire? You’re the only subject of mine.”

“Gross,” Ruby wrinkled her nose in displeasure, but Emma leaned once more across Leila’s abandoned seat to plant a full, strong kiss of gratitude on Regina’s lips.

 

\----

 

“You’re not really getting him two hot dogs, are you?” Leila asked as Robin placed his order once they’d reached the front of the line, her eyes widening in surprise at his direct violation of Emma’s wishes. “My mom’s going to kill you. And like, she really could, you know.”

“Which one?” He mused, digging his wallet out of his back pocket to offer up his credit card in exchange for the snacks. “Because I’ll assure you, I’m only afraid of one of your mothers, and it’s not Emma Swan.”

“Why not?” Leila argued, indignant on Emma’s behalf. She swallowed down the temptation to verbally tear him limb from limb in retaliation; she’d never quite forgiven him for the way he’d handled all of their relationships in their cursed life, and it was the sole fact that he’d managed to create an extremely adorable baby that saved him now. “She could kick your ass. Easily.”

“But she wouldn’t,” he shrugged, and his confidence served only to irk her further. “I’ve known your moms a lot longer than you have, you know.”

“Just because you partied with them in college and tried to buy a marriage with my mom doesn’t mean you--”

“I’m not talking about that,” he interrupted as two neat, foil-wrapped hot dogs were placed into his extended palm. He led the way in the direction of their seats once more. “I knew a very _different_ them. Before they balanced budgets and poured beers for a living. And trust me, Emma’s bark is a lot worse than her bite. That is, when she bothers to do either herself instead of enlisting a wolf to fight her battles for her.”

“Someone’s bitter,” Leila commented blithely, following him down the stairs towards the rest of their family with her arms laden with more snacks than she knew they could possibly eat, especially with only three innings left.

“Why don’t you read more of Henry’s storybook?” Robin suggested; he shrugged one shoulder, nonplussed, and paused as he shifted into his seat beside Marian and tossed the hot dogs one by one into Henry’s outstretched hands. “There are more sides to that story than the ones you know about.”

“What story?” Regina looked up from her book as Leila settled beside her once more, acknowledging his suggestion with nothing more than a shrug in return.

“Ours,” Robin called over to her in response, and their eyes met significantly.

“I mean, what is there that Henry hasn’t already told me? Regina was a bandit, Emma was a runaway royal, Graham talked to animals, Ruby ate villagers--”

“It was _one time_ ,” Ruby defended, though Leila spoke over her as though she’d never interrupted. "An _accident!"_

“-- Robin declared war on Emma, my parents frickle frackled and got magically pregnant, and then Regina cast a curse, and here we are.” She squinted, looking between Regina and Emma for confirmation. “Right?”

“You should work for SparkNotes,” Emma rolled her eyes, and Henry gaped at her in horror.

 “That’s the _worst_ summary of a story I’ve ever heard in my life,” he complained, his brow furrowed and his mouth turned down into a frown. “It’s like you’ve never even --”

“Henry, look!” Leila cried, and with a significant _crack_ , they watched with an awed sort of excitement as the ball connected with the bat, bounced once, hard and fast against the ground and sailed directly towards Henry’s face.

Regina, who had paid very little attention to the actual game thus far, stared intently at the ball until it slowed to an almost perfect halt and dropped into Henry’s lap.

As the crowd cheered wildly at the spectacular display, and the crowd dispersed from around them at their attempt at nabbing it, Henry rolled the ball between his hands in suspicious disbelief. He glanced between Leila and Regina, both with their gazes trained earnestly on the field, and in a voice dripping with far more sarcasm than any ten-year-old should possess, he commented, “That was cool. Almost like…”

“...like magic!” The announcer finished his sentence in a booming voice, and Leila bit her lip around the smile that threatened to burst forth despite the mounting annoyance on his face.

“This isn’t catching a foul ball!” He complained, jabbing a finger into Leila’s chest with his spare hand unoccupied by clutching the ball tightly. “This is cheating!”

“Oh, come on, they were never going to pop a fly ball you could catch to the third base line, and there’s only like one inning left,” Leila explained, looking to Regina for support. “Don’t you think?”

“How did you do that, anyway?” Her mother inquired instead, perplexed. “Did you manipulate the bat?” She gasped, impressed. “The _player_?”

“The _wind_ ,” Leila explained under her breath, as though Regina had just asked her the answer to a first grade math problem. “I made a funnel tunnel. Easy.”

“Leila,” Regina sighed, lowering her voice so that she could ensure no one would eavesdrop on the particulars. “Just because we _can_ manipulate the wind, doesn’t mean we _should._ ”

“Just because we _can_ manipulate traffic on the interstate out of our way, doesn’t mean we _should_.”

Regina chewed her bottom lip thoughtfully, her eyes narrowing as she hesitated. “That’s different.”

“Yeah, because mine’s better. At least Henry caught a foul ball with mine.”

“And who got you to the game on time?”

“ _I_ did,” Emma pointed out, startling the two who hadn’t even known she’d been listening. “You can manipulate traffic without using magic, you know. It’s called driving offensively.”

“The way you drive _is_ offensive.” Regina agreed, to which Emma huffed and crossed her arms, opening her mouth to spew her indignant rebuttal.

Leila grinned, closed her eyes, and settled back into her seat once more as the sounds surrounding her blended into a whole that made her feel calm in all of the chaos. She’d spent a lifetime waiting for a family just like this one; this perfect set of imperfect people who made her feel perfectly at home in the middle of a crowd of thousands.

Maybe, Leila thought, she might love baseball after all.

  


\----

 

It wasn’t that Emma wasn’t thankful for the approaching end of the school year; the days were growing longer, there would be an increased frequency of backyard picnics surrounded by fresh, new flowers taking over the garden, and Regina’s closet had suddenly been stripped of her heavy winter coats and replaced with crisp, cool linen dresses. So the fact that Henry and Leila were starting to have shorter school days and coming home earlier wasn’t the problem; not exactly. It was just that...well, Regina had reached a certain point in her pregnancy where she’d begun to exhibit a certain set of needs, and they struck her like clockwork each day.

Regina had experienced very little morning sickness this time around, breezing through the beginning of her first trimester as though it came as naturally to her as being bossy (a phenomenon on which Emma had commented aloud and immediately, deeply regretted.) Her increased boost of hormonal energy made her mornings at work more productive, affecting a spring to her step that carried her home by lunchtime for a very specific, intimate appointment with an intensely hot, midday shower. The first time Emma had happened to be home when Regina arrived, she’d followed her quietly up the stairs and into their bedroom, coaxed in by the billowing steam from the cracked-open bathroom door.

It wasn’t like she’d never given thought to how Regina might...entertain herself while Emma wasn’t around, but it was the first time she’d been faced with the reality of the idea. For as soon as she nudged the door open further with her hip, leaning into the frame casually, she was presented with an image for which she couldn’t have possibly prepared herself; Regina, the long, lean expanse of her back pressed against the glass wall of the shower, a head of sleek, dark, wet hair clinging to her neck and shoulders, an inconspicuous hand trailing lazily over her thighs with burning hot water beating down over her body. And while Emma was speechless, Regina certainly wasn’t.

“Emma…” she sighed, a sound that barely carried over the cacophonous rain of water pouring down and running off the marble walls and across the floor, but Emma heard it nonetheless, and bit her lip to stifle her own reaction. She stepped more fully into the room with one gentle knock against the door, just in case, and Regina turned her head over one shoulder at the sound, glancing at Emma through a knowing, heavy-lidded gaze.

“How did you know I was here?” Emma breathed out, her voice muted by some heady combination of the steam and the pure, vibrational, hot energy with which Regina had managed to fill the room. “I was trying to be quiet.”

“I didn’t,” Regina admitted softy, and she turned fully to face Emma now, still speaking through the barrier of the glass door as she sighed deeply, a vocal accompaniment to her frustration, her eyes raking up and down Emma’s form hungrily. She wasn’t the only one who had experienced a recent, seasonal wardrobe shift, and in her mind’s eye she began to peel the thin, white tank top from Emma’s torso and throw it onto the floor to join the dress she’d shimmied out of the moment she’d rushed upstairs. In reality, she cleared her throat, noting with no small amount of satisfaction the way Emma was regarding her with equal, yet subtle, hunger. “I was just...thinking about you.”

"Why, Mayor Mills,” Emma chided softly, the abrupt, playful shift in her voice settling beneath Regina’s skin like its own form of an aphrodisiac. She took several steps closer, one finger curling around the muted gold handle of the glass shower door, though she didn’t tug it open, preserving the last barrier between herself and the very wet, _very_ naked woman staring back at her. “ Are you playing hooky from work? Maybe I should call the sheriff and report you."

Regina scoffed, and with the casual flick of a wrist, the door swung open of its own volition towards Emma, who jumped back to accommodate it. "There is no authority in this town superior to mine. Or haven't you learned that particular lesson by now?"

"Which _particular_ lesson?" Emma challenged, crossing her arms over her chest as she stood tall and imposing in the open entrance to the shower, the fabric of her shirt clinging to her chest as it absorbed the steam of the hot water, nearing translucence, and Regina felt like perhaps she’d almost swallowed her own tongue at the sight of it.

She cleared her throat once more, much more quietly, and then replied in that deep, assured, regal voice that she knew would sink its first hooks into Emma’s subconscious. "That I'm the boss."

"Yeah yeah, of the town,” Emma shrugged, seemingly entirely unaffected, and Regina felt her blood begin to simmer at Emma’s defiant, unaware attitude. “So what?”

"No," Regina paused; she reached out to curl her fingers around the wet, white fabric across Emma’s chest, tugging her closer, very nearly under the spray of water with her, still wholly clothed.  "Of _you."_

 _"Oh,"_ Emma choked out, suddenly and overwhelmingly unable to breathe properly. She caught herself as she fell back when the other woman let her out of her clutches, however briefly. “Regina…”

"And as such,” Regina continued, taking one step back and away from Emma to more firmly stand beneath the water, one hand wandering dangerously and teasingly down her stomach and towards her thighs once more . “It would behoove you to take off your clothes. Right now. Unless, of course, you’d like me to finish what I started before you--"

“Why do you always threaten that?” Emma huffed, complaining; she wriggled out of her jeans as quickly as her body would allow, considering Regina’s excuse of eating for two had become _Emma’s_ excuse to join her, and all of her clothes were fitting a little more tightly as of late. Even still, she’d managed to strip down to nothing in record time and practically leap into the expansive, echoing marble cavern with her. And while Regina was the one who’d pinned Emma to the wall almost immediately, it was Emma who met every biting demand, who satisfied each specific, aching need Regina vocalized, again and again and _again_.

It wasn’t an isolated incident by any means; Regina had been hesitant to call attention to her wild, rampant, hormonal desires, but once Emma had happened upon them by accident, she found that it was best for her to be home by half-past noon _or else._ For the most part, it wasn’t a difficult task for her to accomplish. On the mornings when she had little to do but check in orders and back-stock the bar, she rushed home with her heart pounding wildly, racing up the stairs to find an impatient Regina waiting for her. And perhaps it was natural in more ways than just the biology of it all; they had spent years apart, orbiting each other intimately but still so _distant_ , and rediscovering the adolescent, aching _need_ to be together when they were now adults with careers and a family afforded them very little time to do just that.

As such, the stolen afternoons had become _theirs_ , no matter what else was happening around them. Emma had had the audacity to be stuck at the bar one Friday afternoon in mid May; she and Ruby had recently decided to offer lunch on Friday, enlisting the skill of a young, eager, aspiring chef who simply needed the kitchen space to launch his pop-up business and as a result, Emma’s business had boomed; Linguini’s social-media following combined with her loyal regulars resulted in a wildly busy Friday afternoon leading into the bar’s busiest evening service of the week. None of this, however, had mattered much to Regina, from whom Emma had received several phone calls in the middle of the rush before she’d slipped into the storeroom unnoticed, aligning her back with the door and exhaling a frustrated breath before bringing one hand to her forehead and using the other to lift her phone to her ear as she accepted the latest call.

“Regina, I --”

“Where are you?” The voice on the other end of the line interrupted coolly, though Emma could practically feel the heat of it as her mind drifted towards what exactly Regina might be doing at...she pulled the phone away from her ear to glance at the screen. _Fuck._ 1:15.

“I’m still stuck at work. The lunch crowd is crazy today, I’m about to eighty-six the new pilsner I got _yesterday_ , and this fucking dork I hired to do the pop-up can barely keep up.”

“That’s unfortunate,” Regina sighed, her voice affecting a tone that was much more understanding and warm, though Emma knew that was due in part to Regina doing exactly what Emma was picturing her doing, alone in their bed in the middle of the afternoon. She groaned and dragged a hand through her hair to move it away from her face. Regina continued, “Who is he?”

“This guy Ruby knows from an old restaurant job in Boston,” Emma explained, leaning back more heavily against the door to relieve an ache in her shoulders. “Tried to make it big in Paris, but you can tell he’s one of those cooks who lets other people do the work for him. Keeps going into the walk-in cooler and giving himself pep-talks, it sounds like. He’s not terrible, though. Nearly sold out of the ratatouille.”

“And this wasn’t something Ruby could have handled by herself?” Regina asked casually, and while they both knew the answer, they also both knew she was just goading Emma into admitting she had missed their unspoken appointment.

“I really needed to be here,” Emma justified her absence in as strong a voice as she could muster, but she could hear the way Regina’s breathing had become shallow, the little whine that escaped her throat at the end of it. “What are...what are you doing?”

“Slip your hand into the front of your jeans,” Regina commanded, and Emma’s throat closed around a gulp at the sound of the haughty, demanding tone she’d decided to use. “Now.”

“Come on, Regina, I can’t...” Emma hesitated, vaguely registering the sound of Ruby’s laughter from the other side of the door as she maneuvered behind the length of the bar, entertaining customers as well as she could in Emma’s sudden absence. “I have to --”

“Did that sound like a question?” Regina purred, gasping, and Emma’s brain short-circuited as her fingers fumbled to fulfill her previous demand, prying the button of her pants undone as her head fell back against the door, her ears ringing with the deep, dark sound of Regina’s voice. “Just because you weren’t here when I thought you’d be doesn’t mean I don’t expect you to --”

“I have like...seven minutes before everything out there will go up in flames without me,” Emma interrupted her, cringing briefly at her poor choice of words before soldiering on, “So if you’re planning to fuck me over the phone in the middle of work, you’d better get started.”

“Someone’s bossy today,” Regina complained, never particularly fond of losing the upper hand, especially in bed. But she was a woman who knew what she wanted, and how best to go about getting it. “Why don’t you leave that to me?”

And so Emma did, and exactly eight minutes later, she threw herself back into the live, electric hum of the lunch rush, engaging a lone customer with her most sincere fake laugh as she washed her hands thoroughly behind the bar, the devious, delicious sounds of Regina coming undone reverberating in her head for the rest of the afternoon.

 

\----

 

All things considered, Regina had had to put very little effort into curating her garden this year compared with each one previously. Her flowers bloomed and burst into vibrant color exactly on time, and in stunning, gorgeous patterns. Both her rhubarb and radishes were thriving, and the green garlic seemed to be repelling the pests to whom she usually lost a significant number of her vegetables.

It was the last Saturday afternoon before the school year would end, and while both of her children would ordinarily find themselves occupied by other things (Henry with his weekly riding lesson, and Leila spending the day with Whale Neck Guy,) Regina was surprised by the complete presence of her entire family as she knelt at the edge of her vegetable patch, yanking out the weeds and tending lovingly to the new growth. She usually resented the sun for beating down so earnestly during the hottest part of the day, but she found herself thankful instead, feeling its light press softly against her skin, followed up by the caress of a cool, spring breeze.

Emma sat cross-legged on the swing, her attention divided between the pages of _What to Expect When Your Wife Is Expecting_ and the rapid, swift exchange of a soccer ball across the length of the backyard between Leila’s nimble feet and Henry’s significantly clumsier ones.

“Come on, Henry, don’t let her take you like that,” Emma coached half-heartedly, turning a page with her finger in mid-air; she’d been practicing, and she was waiting patiently for Regina to look up and notice this tiny display of successful magic. “You’re good at this game.”

“Yeah, but she’s _really_ good,” Henry complained, sending the ball with a good, swift kick soaring towards Leila’s face; she blocked it with ease, and it dropped to the ground between her ankles. “Like, should try out for the soccer team, good.”

Leila’s nose wrinkled in distaste at the suggestion. “I don’t play for _teams._ ”

“Why not?” Regina called over her shoulder, sifting a handful of soil through her fingers before sweeping it over seeds she had just planted. She needed to lay the groundwork for her summer garden now that spring was in full bloom. “It could be good for you. You’d meet new people, occupy your time with something other than schoolwork...and dating. Committing to a team might be the right thing to do.”

“You know, I don’t think I need a lecture on _committing to a team_ from the woman who spent all of last year straddling the line between teams.”

“ _Leila,_ ” Emma chided, waving away Henry’s confused look in her direction as casually as she could. “She’s kidding, Henry. Don’t listen to her.”

 “I never do,” he shrugged, dodging the ball as it flew over his shoulder and rolled gently to Regina’s side; she sent it back in his direction with a burst of magic, never looking over her shoulder, and Emma huffed in frustration at the display of exactly what she’d been hoping Regina would see her doing. “Don’t we need to go up to the attic?”

 “For what?” Emma asked, finally closing her book and dropping it onto the swing beside her. She smiled, squinting against the harsh sun as Regina stood slowly and carefully and brushed her hands off against the small, denim shorts she’d somehow managed to wear despite the very beginning of a swelling baby bump; that, Emma assumed, was another spectacular display of magic, as far as she was concerned.

 “Magic lessons?” Henry prompted, as though his mother had lost her mind, and Leila rolled her eyes at the reminder.

 “ _Nerd_ ,” she scoffed under her breath, earning a sour look from him in return, though he was saved from responding by Regina interjecting smoothly.

 “We’ll wait until the sun goes down for this particular lesson,” Regina explained, settling onto the swing beside Emma and pushing it into motion with her bare feet against the cool, soft grass. “You’ll see why tonight.”

 “Okay,” Henry shrugged, bouncing the ball against the ground once before kicking it gently toward Leila once more. “Then I’m gonna go play my game until then.”

 “One hour,” Emma reminded him, and although Henry rolled his eyes and trudged toward the back door to the house with an annoyed gait, she knew he’d stick to the rule and set a timer for his allotted screen time. She called after him, an afterthought,  “And don’t go to the next level without me!”

 But he had already disappeared through the open door, slamming it closed behind him, and as Emma shook her head fondly, Regina tilted her head back against the swing, feeling the significant drop in her stomach each time gravity pulled her back and forth. Leila dragged her foot across the top of the soccer ball, lifting it effortlessly into the air and kicking it with the top of her foot high enough to bounce it again with her knee, and then back and forth between them.

 “You know, you really are pretty good,” Emma commented fairly, and though Leila yearned to resist the praise, she couldn’t help the grin that blossomed in its wake.

 “Maybe,” Leila agreed with only the slightest hesitation, and before either of her mothers could reply, the roar of a motorcycle from the direction of the front of the house startled two of the three of them. “That’s for me. I’ll be back later!”

 “Woah, hey, wait a minute,” Emma stood swiftly mid-swing, throwing Regina off-balance in her haste. “Where are you going?”

 “We’re just going to get tacos,” Leila explained impatiently, already inching towards the side gate towards where Ace was undoubtedly waiting. “I’ll be back in time for my lesson, I swear.”

 “You’d better be,” Emma warned her, glancing to the side to Regina for back-up, who was nodding along in tandem. “Your time is almost up, you know.”

 “I _know_ ,” Leila practically whined, having grown thoroughly weary of this particular weight of expectation placed upon her shoulders. “And I’ll be ready, okay? But I’ll be a lot _more_ ready if I can go out on a Saturday to have fun like every other sixteen-year-old does.”

 “We never said you couldn’t go,” Regina replied smoothly, her voice cool and unaffected, though Emma knew she labored heavily against the desire to insult Ace in some way every time he appeared, however far away. “Just that we need you to be home on time. Agreed?”

 “Yes, fine, see you tonight!” Leila called, tearing off in the direction of that motorcycle as quickly as she could, and while Regina simply shook her head in amusement, Emma pulled the abandoned ball towards her with the arch of her foot, playing with it absentmindedly.

 “ _Getting tacos_. I hope that doesn’t mean what I think it means,” Emma worried quietly, the clipped annoyance in her tone serving only to amuse Regina further; she always felt a swift rush of affection at the way Emma became so earnestly protective of their daughter.

 “I’m sure there’s no double meaning to that,” Regina assured her, barely concealing the laughter behind her voice as she watched Emma pace back and forth. They seemed to be taking turns, as of late, as to which of them would be level-headed and which would be overly concerned. And this time, it was Emma whose suspicion was spinning away from her, leaving Regina to reel her back in. “It’s Leila. She’s always hungry. I’m sure it really _is_ just tacos.”

 “Right. It’s _Leila_ ,” Emma reiterated, stopping in her tracks to tilt her head to the side and cross her arms over her chest. “The girl could make a euphemism out of a nursery rhyme.”

 “Stop worrying,” Regina implored her, pushing herself up from the swing and wrapping her arms around Emma’s waist in a lazy, casual embrace. “The sun won’t set for hours, and you have me all to yourself. Wouldn’t you rather just...enjoy that?”

 Emma sighed deeply, the first traces of a smile plucking at the corners of her mouth as she looked down at Regina’s hopeful, happy face. “I would.”

 And so, within moments and with very little effort and more than enough of Regina’s magic, Emma _did_ find herself rather enjoying the crisp, cool bite of sparkling white grape juice served in a wine glass because, well, they could just _pretend_. Regina had conjured an exceedingly impressive picnic spread across the quintessential red-and-white-checked blanket, and Emma gradually let all her concern and worry escape her as she whiled away the rest of the afternoon relaxing alongside the gorgeous, glowing woman she loved.

  


\----

 

Leila, as a general rule, had always preferred to maintain an extremely low standard for herself. It had been her approach from her seat in the back of every classroom before transferring to Arendelle, in every failed foster home, and even in most of the relationships in her life. If she made it so that very little was expected of her, the likelihood that she could be a source of disappointment for someone else was equally low.

However, something within her hand changed almost from the moment she’d entered Storybrooke. This was the first home she’d ever truly hoped she’d be able to keep, and so she made a concentrated effort to behave herself and actually contribute. She actually _tried_ in her classes, applied herself to the work, and she was, for the first time, thriving. And it was unlike her to accept invitations to hang out with her classmates and actually follow through, to take Ace’s calls every time they flashed on her screen, but these were the steps she had taken to, however gradually, raise her standards; to expect more from herself so that she could rise to the occasion when other people began to do the same. But for some reason, despite the way she’d learned to anticipate and shoulder the weight of expectation over the last year, her stomach still tied itself in loose knots every time she held her hands aloft and waited for the magic to extend beyond her fingertips.

“It’s not...I don’t know what’s wrong,” she huffed, shaking out her hands as though they were the source of the problem, rather than her mind. Because magic was instinct, but it did also require a certain amount of intellect; and she had it in spades, but the more she thought about how little time she had left to learn, the more she began to freak out.

There would, of course, be plenty of time to continue to learn to wield the magic she possessed; the rest of her life, according to Regina, who had once quietly admitted that she herself still learned new things. But in order to secure her ability, her right to practice magic, Leila would need to defend her powers against the fairies themselves; should she fail to do so, she would lose her magic forever.

And for someone who had railed against the institution so harshly when it had first been presented to her, she had gradually become truly terrified of the idea of losing it. It felt strange to recognize the anxiety swirling low in her belly because of it; she had lived her entire life thus far in a world with no magic at all, no spells or potions or charms to provide fantastical solutions to her ordinary problems. This was more than just an impressive party trick. This was her heritage; a birthright. It was being handed down to her quite literally by the stars themselves, and if she messed that up, like she always managed to do, it would be the biggest disappointment she’d ever known.

“You can do this, Leila,” Regina reassured her from a shadowy corner of the yard beneath the apple tree that was approaching full bloom. She leaned heavily against its wide trunk where she sat alongside a slightly more preoccupied Emma, who held within her hands a dimly glowing glass jar full of gold pixie dust that illuminated the bottom half of her face. She offered a small, thin smile that Leila knew was intended to be comforting but had little practical effect. This was the most hands-off lesson Regina had ever given Leila, and the moment it had become too intricate for Henry’s taste, he had quietly abandoned them all, leaving Leila on her own with both her parents and her godmother. And while she often had Tinkerbell on the sidelines for gentle encouragement and support, for the first time, she had taken instead to pacing furiously back and forth just on the periphery of Leila’s vision.

“You’re not taking this seriously enough,” Tink reprimanded her in a sharp, stilted voice that Leila wasn’t sure she’d ever heard escape her lips before. She had always been a patient and nurturing godmother, even if her speech was laced with a little bit of attitude and a whole lot of tough love. “This is the only chance you’re going to get to prove to the fairies that you are worthy of this. To handle your magic. And _this_ is the best you can do?” “I’m _trying_ , okay?” Leila bit out, irritable and flushed, as she concentrated on whipping a gentle night breeze into a carefully constructed wind tunnel that followed her every direction. The palms of her hands glinted and gleamed with the dust she’d slapped between them. “It’s harder in the dark.”

“That’s why we have to practice at night,” Regina reminded her, much more patiently than Tinkerbell would have, which was clear by the way she cut steely eyes in Regina’s direction upon her interjection.

“I still don’t get why I can’t do this during the day,” Leila argued, dropping her hands to her sides before bringing them up to rest against her hips with a huff of annoyance. “That would be easier.”

“The Midsummer’s Night is when the veil between our world and the fairy world is the thinnest,” Tinkerbell explained, in a tired voice that suggested it wasn’t the first time. She paced back and forth before them more slowly now, shifting eye contact between Leila, Emma, and Regina in equal measure as she did so. Her voice shifted lower. “Everything happy, and bright, and beautiful about the changing seasons is brought into the world by the fairies. Crafted, selected, _hand-painted_ by us. They won’t be coming here for you,” Tink reminded Leila, coming to a stop directly in front of her. “They have a job to do. They’ll come when we call them. And when we do, and you challenge your magic to them, you’re _going_ to be ready.”

“Who put the fairies in charge of everything, anyway?” Leila demanded, rolling her eyes and expending a significant amount of energy in resisting the urge to stomp her foot. Her wrist was beginning to cramp from the last half hour of attempting one of the tasks she’d be expected to perform, and her stomach had just begun to twinge with discomfort as she realized she was ready for her evening snack.

“Where do you think our magic comes from?” Regina interjected suddenly, as though she was realizing something for the first time. Had she _really_ just...skipped over the most basic component of a magical education in favor of the harder tasks?

“I never really thought about it,” Leila shrugged, and Regina’s face fell at the confirmation of her own mistake. “You just...said I could do magic and started teaching me.”

Regina cringed, glancing apologetically at Tinkerbell, and Emma squeezed her thigh in a gesture of solidarity at the sight of the fairy’s rapidly reddening face. “I might have...overlooked a significant portion of your education.”

“Might have?” Tinkerbell repeated hotly, though she returned her undivided attention to Leila, gesturing for her to join her mothers by taking a seat on the picnic blanket they’d relocated beneath the tree. Leila plopped gracelessly to the ground across from her, the four of them forming a misshapen cross as they faced in to one another with Tinkerbell as their main focus.

“Although you _should_ know this with less than a month before you come of age...” Tinkerbell began slowly, her eyes cutting dramatically to the side to where Regina, uncharacteristically, blushed furiously.

“Pregnancy brain,” Emma jumped to her defense, though she seemed less motivated by the minute by the idea of joining her on Tinkerbell’s bad side. Leila shook her head, though she rolled her eyes fondly, and then waited patiently for Tink to continue.

“All magic comes from the stars, and then it’s harnessed, distributed, monitored, and controlled by the fairies.” She explained further, reaching out for the jar that Emma still held cradled within her hands to grasp it with her own. Her fingers dipped inside, drawing out a pinch of the shimmering, iridescent gold dust and rubbing it between her fingers.

"Witches and other magical practitioners have the genetic predisposition for manipulating stardust, and its effects on the universe, but only _after_ they come of age. Seventeen summers. Young witches need a little extra boost and that's where we, as fairy godmothers, come in. Similar to how there are garden fairies and water fairies, there’s a certain variety of us who stay on the mainland between solstices to nurture and supervise and teach idiot baby witches like _you_ how to be responsible."

Leila’s brow furrowed as she absorbed the information. She’d always thought of Tinkerbell as her teacher as much as Regina was, and while some part of her must have known inherently that there were others like her, she’d never met another fairy and had thus given the concept very little thought. "Garden fairies? Water? Do they live _in_ gardens and...and like, ponds? I don't --"

Tink’s fists balled up at her sides as her mouth turned down into a severe frown. "This must be a punishment!” She interrupted, the irritated rant falling from her mouth without abandon.”They _had_ to know how difficult this would be. Live in gardens? Regina, is she kidding? I just..."

Regina held a calming, reassuring hand out in front of her to give Tinkerbell pause, turning instead to Leila to answer her questions. "Honey, you're thinking of gnomes. Fairies bring about the seasons. They melt the frost and nurture the bulbs, they wake everything from hibernation and ready everything to bloom. They spend months preparing and on each solstice, they cross over and...and..."

She gestured casually as she searched for the correct phrase, biting her bottom lip as her eyes rolled upward in thought. Before she could choose the words, Emma caught Leila’s eye and spoke up helpfully. "Flip a switch."

"It's more complicated than that, and it’s involved and _so very important_ , but we'll go more more in-depth with the specifics tomorrow." Regina quickly interjected before Tink could _really_ fly off the handle. "Let's just focus on your abilities right now since the sky is so clear and it's supposed to rain the next few nights."

"Okay, but I still have a question." Leila pressed on, undeterred, and Emma winced as Tinkerbell began to visibly vibrate with annoyance.

"Of course you do." Regina replied automatically, a drained sigh falling from her mouth, which earned her another annoyed glare by way of Tinkerbell. 

"Of course she does," Tink repeated, offering the first reassuring smile Leila had seen cross her mouth all evening; it felt like a sorely desired promise, and she let it settle somewhere near her stomach to  light her up from the inside out. She felt the glimmering specks of dust against her palms tingle in response, too. "Because she knows _nothing_ , she needs to ask."

"So, the fairy godmother thing,” Leila mused slowly, and when Tinkerbell extended her hand to gently help her to stand, she grasped it tightly and allowed herself to be pulled up. “How does that...work? If I'm made of stardust and so is pixie dust, why do you need to give it to me so I can practice? Is it different because of all the gross... _True Love_ stuff?"

"Basically, we're each allotted a specific amount of dust for our charge, and at the end of your sixteenth year, _you_ have to be able to successfully manipulate and control stardust without our help, or you won’t be considered strong enough to remain connected to your powers."

"That seems...harsh." Leila hesitated in a voice suddenly much smaller than the confident one she’d been projecting for the majority of the evening.

"As a child of true love, you have a very specific aptitude that sets you apart from other witches.” Tink continued, a note of pride slipping into her tone. “You are _made_ of magic in the same way I am, and while you will always have powers because of it, you'll never harness or be able to properly function with them. Case in point: your mother."

"Hey!” Emma complained. “Don't throw me under the bus!

"She chose a life away from magic, which is why hers is always on the fritz. Why she burns and blows everything up and has zero self-control or awareness. She has _just_ enough in her to make things happen occasionally, because she’s also a child of true love, but not enough to actually practice. And that’s why I'm your godmother; I followed her magic to you when she gave hers up."

Leila contemplated this, getting all this new information at once was overwhelming and confusing and she wished she'd have just been born into all of this from the beginning, then she wouldn't be in this situation in the first place. "And that'll happen to me? I'll just be...fritzy? That's not terrible, and maybe my lessons will make it better than Emma's…” Leila muttered, seemingly rolling the options over in her head. “I can probably live with that."

"Your mother is one of the greatest witches of her generation,” Tinkerbell gestured towards Regina, who met the affirmation with tangible, pleased pride. “She was _so_ good, in fact, her godmother was the queen of all fairies. So trust me when I say, you _must_ do well."

"Tink, please, I don't expect her to be anything but herself. I'm good at everything, because that's how I was raised and how I function, if she doesn't pass, she doesn't pass."

 **"** That's not-" Tinkerbell quickly interjected, but Regina spoke over her quickly, not willing to let this point pass without making her position completely clear to her daughter.

"But make no mistake, Leila, you will at least understand the basics of control and safety, and that's what most of these lessons are for."

She nodded her response, a brow quirked in defiance. “So what happened on _your_ seventeenth Midsummer’s Night, Mom?"

“I, well….I was under a curse when I turned seventeen,” Regina reminded her sheepishly. “I never actually did this.”

“How is that fair?!” Leila cried, incredulous, her arms splayed wide in disbelief as she turned towards Tinkerbell instead with an accusatory glare.

“Think of it like...making straight A’s for the entirety of your school career and then not being required to take the final exam. It’s an extreme circumstance.”

“So you just...have enough control over yourself to perform every fairy task like it’s nothing? Without dust or supervision?”

“Believe me, Regina’s got some _killer_ self control,” Emma rolled her eyes and replied without really considering to whom she was speaking, earning a narrowed-eye, playful glance from Regina and one reluctant, snorted laugh from Tinkerbell.

Regina, choosing to ignore her, nodded with determination and wiggled her fingers at her sides; she inhaled a deep breath and then blew it out, calmly, slowly. She raised her arms into the space before her, and Leila thought fleetingly that if she’d had a baton, she would look very much like the conductor of an orchestra.

And the universe, it seemed, was in full agreement as the very elements poised themselves in Regina’s palms to respond to her commands without hesitation. The first chord struck and broke over Leila like a wave when it occurred to her that Emma had moved to stand beside her, equally awestruck, as they simply watched Regina together, still and strong and talented and _beautiful._ She performed each task in sequential order without so much as blinking; a bright, burning ball of flame burst into existence within her palm, the crackle and roar of it rising in crescendo as the resulting wisps of smoke whirled in the air above. They spun and formed themselves into thin, feathery imitations of flowers in shades of grey, and with one simple, well-directed stream of air blown from between Regina’s lips, the smoke transformed into the real, bright versions of those flowers that she lifted and sent on a cool breeze into Leila’s outstretched, astonished hands.

That same gentle, spring breeze picked up with a quick flick of her other wrist, encircling them with a sudden force that threatened to lift Leila from the ground against her will. She gasped and glanced in disbelief at Emma, who was so preoccupied by the fleet of fireflies that had begun to surround her in a careful, illuminated sort of dance that she didn’t even notice. And it all happened so _simultaneously_ that Leila could hardly comprehend that it was Regina making it all happen, creating this thoughtful, fluid, melodic display. She thought once more of her as the conductor, nearly hearing the symphony of her magic as she watched her mother’s hands flit and float elegantly through the air before it all ceased and came to a graceful, sudden halt.

 "I-I'd forgotten how beautiful you are at commanding the elements, Regina." Tinkerbell stuttered, flabbergasted, and even in the moonlight Regina blushed at the compliment. It had obviously been years since she'd been able to actively practice, and even _she_ was a little proud of how easily it had come back to her. As Tinkerbell rushed to pull her into a tight hug, Regina sighed, returning it earnestly and with gratitude for even the slightest bit of assurance that she was doing _something_ right; it made all the difference.

Tinkerbell pulled away from her embrace just enough to look Leila dead in the eyes. "You see? That's the exact level of control you should aspire to. It should be as easy as breathing."

“But it’s...it’s just _not_ ,” Leila sighed, wishing not for the first time that she had about six _more_ years to develop these skills. “I don’t feel like I’ll ever be as good as...all that.”

“Which is why I’m not putting pressure on you to do anything but your best.” Regina reminded her softly, and they shared an identical, understanding smile that made Leila feel like she could float without the use of any magic at all.

“But I’ve made no such promise,” Tink interjected in a tone that suggested she was about to steer them firmly back onto the path of tough love. “And your best is _not_ the C-average magic you’ve been giving me. Let’s keep going.”

“Right.” Leila nodded with a new determination and enthusiasm after seeing such a spectacle created by her own _mother_ and released a deep sigh, bringing her palms together to rub them once before. She jerked her head towards Emma expectantly. “Dust?”

Emma, who’d retaken the jar from Tinkerbell’s custody sometime in the middle of her first tantrum, nodded once and placed it in Leila’s waiting hand. "I want to try with a little less this time, okay?"

Emma looked a little hesitant, but with the clearing of Regina's throat to shut her up and the glare Tinkerbell sent her way she eagerly nodded her encouragement. "Go for it. You've got this, kid."

"Okay, alright,” Leila swept a small pinch of dust between her fingers, rubbing it softly between her palms to create a friction that crackled and popped. “I just have to twist my wrist like...four degrees, and my finger loops a couple times and then--"

She gasped in delight at the roar of the crackling ball of fire that appeared, hovering above her palm, and registered with pride the light it reflected behind Regina’s eyes as she nodded her approval.

“Excellent. Do it again.”

So Leila did, commanding the elements with as much elegance as she could muster, sending magic above her into the very stars from which she was born.

 


	3. Summer

 

**** Over the course of Emma Swan’s life in this realm, for as long as she could remember, there had been three things that defined the month of June in Storybrooke: the ushering in of distinctly more comfortable weather, the seasonal opening of Any Given Sundae, and the summer series of movies in the park. 

It had been one of her biggest complaints during the years that she lived in Boston; sweltering, stifling, summer heat was just not for her, and she found herself longing for the long, breezy coastal days of her childhood each year until the first leaves of fall came along to relieve her. She had never found a rocky road in the city that could compare to a pint from Ingrid’s shop. And though there had been a few attempts during college to find an experience in the park that could compare, it never quite felt like summer until the first night spent sprawled on a blanket in the park at the center of town with everyone else she had always known and loved.

It made Emma’s heart swell to watch Henry skip excitedly ahead of them the moment he spotted a few of his friends from school, Regina strolling beside her in perfect tandem, their arms laden with folded blankets and a basket full of snacks Regina had thoughtfully packed before they’d left the house. It was a tradition she’d participated in for as long as she could remember (which, notably, held a much clearer, stronger grip in her memory following the age of sixteen and a cursed existence of which she now held full awareness.) She had taken Henry at the beginning of each summer for as long as they’d lived in Storybrooke again, usually with her parents in tow, crowded onto one large blanket until he’d grown too big for them all to share the space. And now here she was for yet another year, only this time with a much different, beautifully expanded family in tow; for the first time with Regina. She commented on the notion aloud, earning a furrowed, confused look from Regina as they strayed from the paved sidewalk to walk across cool, fluffy grass.

“This isn’t our first time at this movie series together,” Regina reminded her slowly, a hint of bemusement lacing the edge of her tone. She stepped carefully around the corner of someone else’s blanket, scanning the crowd for a sufficient space to settle down.

“What are you talking about?” Emma replied with genuine confusion. She noted from the corner of her eye that Henry had firmly landed about seven blankets away and, with a satisfied nod, began to lay down their own set up of pillows upon woven blankets upon quilts. There was plenty of space open on one side of them, and she hoped against hope that it would soon be filled by their friends before her parents had a chance to get to it.

“Emma,” Regina chided, and by the tone in her voice, Emma braced herself as soon as her back was turned for the pending onslaught of judgement she anticipated being lobbed in her general direction. “We came here together the summer before we left for college. Sat right in front of the screen to watch  _ The Wizard of Oz _ ?” At Emma’s continued blank stare, Regina rolled her eyes and sat carefully around her ever-expanding belly. “Ruby stole a box of Chardonnay from the kitchen of the diner? She hid it in a pillowcase and we drank it hot?”

“Oh, right,” Emma nodded slowly, her eyes lighting up with the memory as it loaded fully onto the forefront of her mind’s eye. “Tink disappeared halfway through the movie with that guy...Terence? I...forgot you were there,” she admitted cautiously, reaching into the picnic basket for a well-wrapped sandwich.

“You were eighteen and an idiot,” Regina reminded her, and though she sounded annoyed, she snatched the snack from Emma’s hands to help her unwrap it more efficiently. “You didn’t even notice my existence until we moved in together a year after that.”

“I knew who you were,” Emma defended sharply, though she still shrunk beneath Regina’s knowing smirk. “You were just...you know, Tink’s shy friend.”

Emma watched Regina’s mouth form into the shape of her rebuttal but before she could let it out, two figures loomed above them quite suddenly, right behind Regina. Tink and Ruby were not only providing convenient shade from the slowly setting sun, but also standing directly in the patch of grass beside them Emma had hoped to avoid saving for her parents.

“This spot taken?”

“By you now, and thank god,” Emma replied gratefully, her head tilting to the side in confusion; as Tink began to spread out their own set of blankets, Emma pointed dumbly up at Ruby. “What’s with all the pillows?”

“Uh, Regina’s pregnant, dummy. It’s my job to look after a pregnant Regina in any realm, if you’ll recall,” Ruby explained, and when Regina tilted her face upwards to smile happily in recognition, Ruby leaned down and kissed the crown of her head fondly. “How many pillows did  _ you _ bring?”

“Enough,” Emma countered, though she noted with satisfaction that Regina  _ did _ look a lot more comfortable with the bit of extra cushion Ruby was tucking behind her back. She received her own neatly-wrapped sandwich for her effort, and she plopped down on the bare grass between their two blanket pallets.

“What’s the first movie this summer?” Tinkerbell asked, reaching into the snack basket and rummaging around until she came out with a bag of popcorn.

“Mary Poppins,” Regina answered absentmindedly as she glanced around the square while it slowly filled with more couples and families. She had expected to find Leila somewhere by now; she had said she might meet them there, but had not as of yet been seen. It was distinctly  _ uncool _ after the age of...well apparently ten, judging by Henry’s disappearance, to be seen watching the movie with your parents instead of with friends, and even though it was Leila’s first time, it appeared she already understood the rule.

“I haven’t seen her yet,” Ruby murmured, leaning over Emma’s lap to speak primarily to Regina around a mouthful of the prime rib sandwich Regina had prepared specifically for her, “but I’ll keep my ears open.”

“How did you know?” Regina mumbled back, still looking around to no avail. The sun had nearly set completely, prompting the lamp posts along the perimeter of the park to come to life with an ethereal glow. Emma, having scarfed down her sandwich in record time, settled down into their significant mound of pillows, curled in towards Regina as she listened to the conversation happening above her.

“I can see it in your eyes,” Ruby explained, nuding Tink with her elbow to pull her attention away from the screen that had begun to roll the trailers at the beginning of the movie. “I can feel your anxiety, too. She’s okay. She’s just a stupid teenager.” She nudged an unresponsive Tink again with a little more aggression, jerking her head towards Regina significantly. “Hey. She’s got Leila anxiety. Do your, you know...thing.”

Without hesitation, Tinkerbell practically floated around to Regina’s other side, earning a few complaints from several people behind them at the disruption. She cupped Regina’s cheek gently within her palm, and Regina gasped at the sudden flow of magic beneath her skin, soothing her aching anxiety and prompting a distinct flutter in her belly as the baby moved in response. She breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed back into the pillows alongside Emma, resting a gentle palm on her thigh.

“Hey,” Emma complained, squinting through one eye up at Tinkerbell from her position nearly curled into Regina’s lap around her belly. “You guys are  _ my  _ best friends and you’re, you know, like...spoiling the fuck out of her. How about sharing the wealth?”

Though both Ruby and Tinkerbell simply looked at her as though she was quite stupid, Regina grinned, beckoning Emma up towards her with a crooked finger to bestow upon her a gentle, consoling kiss. She murmured against Emma’s lips, “I can’t help it if everyone loves me.”

“ _ And _ you’re not a brat,” Ruby agreed, rolling her eyes and crossing her arms over her chest, her attention turned towards the screen as the very beginning of the movie began to play. “Only children, I swear.”

“Well, Regina’s an only child too,” Tink supplied fairly, and if the woman in question shuffled a little uncomfortably, well, Emma would be the only one who noticed. There was still the question of an unidentified, ambiguous sibling floating around through the occasional conversation, though Emma knew it must have weighed on Regina more often than she spoke of it.

“Plus she’s hot,” Ruby continued, ticking off the reasons on her fingers one by one. “She bakes stuff for us all the time, sends me dinner when I work late, and she’s super talented with magic. It’s quid pro quo. She scratches our back, we scratch hers. What are you good for? You had to go and give up your magic for  _ glory. _ ”

“I commanded an  _ army _ ,” Emma defended, and though Ruby laughed it off as though it were nonsense, Emma made sure to glance up at Regina as the shadow of a younger, stronger  _ soldier _ Emma passed behind her eyes and her cheeks reddened the slightest bit. “So what you’re saying is...she bribes you and sweet talks you and now she has you in the palm of her hand?”

"Absolutely." Tinkerbell chimed in, not taking her eyes away from the screen, but reaching to squeeze Regina's hand. "And for the record, she and I have been and always will be best friends. There and here. Then and now."

"You were  _ my  _ fairy godmother."

"Your magic went to your daughter and so did I, I can't help it if Regina came along with that package."

_ “Shhhh,” _ a stranger hushed from a few blankets over and Tink merely flipped them off in response and snuggled back into Regina's other side, unbothered. Emma huffed and followed suit, frustrated by her inability to form a rebuttal, but calmed instantly when Regina's fingertips began to work their way methodically, lovingly through her hair.

Regina smiled and her heart swelled as she surveyed her surroundings; she'd never been fought over before, not in this way, and even if it had taken thirty-three years for the feeling, she was grateful it had finally,  _ finally _ arrived.

 

\----

 

Something like sixty or so feet behind her family, Leila Mills stood at the edge of the park line, blending into a small group of her friends from school. She wasn't particularly fond of them, not really; their trivial lives and miniscule problems made her roll her eyes most of the time, but sometimes it was still nice to be out with kids her own age, kids who, for the most part, accepted her; kids who weren't her parents or her brother and had nothing to do with other realms and magic and  _ True Love _ . Her life had been inundated with all of those things for months and it felt so good to do something a little... _ bad _ for once.

When Regina had invited her to come along to watch the movie, she had been casual about it, as was her mother’s usual  _ modus operandi _ . Leila, however, knew her better than to believe her and could see the offer for the blatant front that it was. She actually  _ really _ wanted Leila to be there, but was too afraid of the rejection to say so aloud. Of course, she  _ had _ planned on going all along, but there had been an... _ incident _ a few nights prior.

They had been up in her room, just the two of them, practicing each of her magical tasks a little later than usual because she just couldn't  _ quite _ get it right; Regina was (rightfully) pushing her to get at least  _ one _ thing done perfectly before the session ended. But Leila had stayed up too late the night before and hadn't had her morning or afternoon coffee and one thing had led to another and she’d  _ really _ lashed out. She had said some things that Regina wouldn’t have acknowledged had hurt her; about the new baby, about how lucky she would be to never be given away and then brought back, only to have so much expected of her. And Regina may not have said anything in response, but the stabbed, heartbroken look that tore across her features in conjunction with her quick descent from the loft told an entirely different story.

Over the next few days, Leila hadn’t seen much of her mother at all. She found her breakfast made and her lunch packed as always, but no matter where she ended up in the house, Regina was somehow  _ noticeably _ absent. She wasn't there to see her off to school during the last few days of the year like she normally was. Emma hadn’t been acting differently whatsoever, so Regina definitely hadn’t confided in her about what had happened. And this, to Leila, honestly made clear how hurtful the betrayal had been, for Regina had decided to bear the burden of it alone.

While sitting at the kitchen table shoveling cold cereal into her mouth on one of her last school mornings, she watched Emma shuffle into the kitchen wrapped tightly in her bathrobe, long ponytail messy and askew, obviously moments after simply rolling out of bed and lumbering downstairs.

"Hey,” Leila offered tentatively, and Emma sighed and half smiled her way with a nod as she moved along a quick, purposeful path towards the steaming coffee pot.

"Morning, kid.” She retrieved her favorite mug from its home on the lowest shelf, pouring swiftly into it. “Do you have everything you need for school?”

Leila nodded silently in response, giving her mother a moment to further get her bearings before asking her more questions. They'd built this repertoire over the course of the school year once Emma had begun living with them full-time, and Leila knew it was the best way for them both to survive the early mornings.  _ Don't talk incessantly before the first sip of caffeine. _

Emma lifted the edge of her mug to her lips and hummed softly to herself as she gazed absently over the rim while Leila made her way to the sink to wash her bowl, Emma focused in on her and shook her head to clear it of the lingering, sleepy haze. "Are you taking Henry or am I?"

"I...uh...I'll take him."

"Okay. Thank you."

Leila inhaled deeply, worried about the answer she might receive, but decided that knowing definitively would be more important. Emma wasn't that scary; not in comparison, anyway. "Where's Mom? Did she have an early doctor's appointment or something?"

Emma shook her head in the negative, confusion lining her brow. "She's still upstairs. She asked me to take care of breakfast and stuff. Why?"

"No reason, she's just…” Leila hesitated, tempted to spill her true motive, but she swallowed down the urge at the sight of Emma’s unaware frown. If Regina hadn’t told her, she must have had a good reason. “You know, usually down here at the ass crack of dawn, so I was worried about her."

"Oh no, she's fine,” Emma confirmed, breathing a subtle sigh of relief; Leila thought maybe she just needed the spare second of stress-free breath, and decided that perhaps she had earned it. “Just tired. Growing a human and all that. You can go and say--"

"No, I'm good, I was just checking. I'll send her a text later."

"Alright, have a good day then,” Emma shrugged, sparing Leila a second, perplexed glance at her odd behavior, but ultimately let it go for the sake of the moments of morning peace she could see looming on her horizon. “I'll get Henry down here so you can get going."

The next day had been more of the same. She'd gotten up early trying to catch a glimpse of Regina, whom she had decided must have been actively avoiding her, and the worst part was that Leila could understand why. She had been an awful, spiteful,  _ bitch _ for no real reason; she had simply been tired and overstimulated and had launched an attack on Regina's worst insecurities in retaliation. That particular button, the choice of adoption and  _ giving her up _ , was one Leila had actively tried to remove from her arsenal, but it had consumed her anyway and she'd regretted it the moment it had.

The honest truth be told, Leila knew she had no right to hurt Regina anymore, she was unequivocally her  _ mom  _ now, in name and in everyday life, and it was for that simple reason alone that she stood warily along the outskirts of the park attempting to catch glimpses of her family enjoying the movie together without her. If there was one thing she knew for certain she’d inherited from her mother, it was their identical propensity for self-sabotage and self-loathing.

And here she was now as a result, watching every woman in her life together -- strong, brave, powerful,  _ loving _ \-- snuggled up on a quilt laughing happily, together without her. In any other life, in her most recent one, she wouldn't have even considered going over to them; she wanted to be better now, though, and desperately so. When her friends had asked her if she was going to the “dumb movie thing” and if she wanted to crash it and have their own party, she'd said hell yes without even really thinking about it. She was still  _ technically _ at the thing, wasn’t she? She just wasn’t there with the person who wanted her the most; who wanted to share a tradition and make a memory  _ with _ her. Sometimes falling back into her old habits was easier than breathing, and it sucked.

"Why do you keep staring over there at all those people?” One of her slightly drunk friends slurred to her, laughing as she shoved at Leila's arm teasingly. “Or are you actually watching this lame ass movie?"

"No, I'm watching my family, they're all over there." Leila sighed wistfully, choosing to ignore the jibe while the weight of the word  _ family _ caused an ache to settle snugly into the space above her heart.

"So? Families suck and they're all dumb.” Her friend shrugged, nonplussed, and deposited a slightly warm can of beer into her hand. Leila noted with a sharp lurch that it was the new, local one Emma had just excitedly stocked at the Rabbit Hole following a strengthened relationship with the brewery; she remembered the brightly patterned design, and wondered briefly where exactly her friends had gotten it. “This movie is stupid, and you're not even drinking with us. Loosen up a little, Mills. If you're gonna be a downer, go hang out with them."

"You don't know the first thing about them,” Leila defended harshly, the words thick with regret in her throat as they fought their way to the surface. “And until you've been  _ without _ a family for the majority of your life, don't you  _ dare _ say they suck. I think I  _ will _ go be with them.” She sighed deeply, making her definitive decision and kicking off from the tree she’d been leaning against with a significant push. She quirked a challenging brow, punctuating her statement with a tiny, snarky smirk. “Enjoy being fake delinquents with your bullshit privileged lives."

"Says the rich ass Mayor's daughter." Another classmate, a lanky boy with a long nose, sneered.

"Says the foster rat." Someone else doubled over at his own joke.

"Says the  _ princess  _ whose mommy didn't even want her." The final heckle was punctuated with the threatening crushing of an empty beer can, everyone in the small group egging him on. Some  _ friends,  _ Leila thought to herself with a derisive snort.

"Well, she wants me now, and that's good enough for me.” She crossed her arms over her chest, challenging them with just a look to take their jeers even one step further. “You can all go fuck yourselves."

She half-heartedly lobbed the can of beer the first girl had given her at one of their heads; it missed, purposefully, because she wasn’t an idiot. They began to mock her for that too, so she stormed off into the park to make things right with her mother.

Cautiously, tentatively, Leila made her way among the various blankets, following the maze as well as she could in the semi-darkness, some people shooting her dirty looks and whispering for her to get out of the way. When she finally approached the one her family shared, she paused with enough distance left between them. Ruby had begun to show awareness of her advancing about twenty feet ago and had glanced at her warily through the side of her gaze the whole time. She must have known what was going on (heightened, annoyingly sharp wolf senses as they were) and Leila even thought she might have heard a tiny growl, but she couldn’t be sure if that was just her own projection after the confirmation that Ruby was  _ actually _ the wolf of Henry’s stories. Ruby had been innately and increasingly more protective of Regina as the months passed, but her eyes softened upon the brief eye contact she made with Leila; she loved her too, so she simply shrugged and when she turned and refocused her attention on the screen, Leila paused and began to steel her resolve.

She hovered awkwardly for a few moments, the disgruntled crowd around her humming with displeasure at the interruption. Regina was clearly the center of their own small universe tonight; everyone was curled around or against her in some way, and Leila wasn't sure she'd ever seen anything more  _ cozy _ . She instantly felt a sharp pang of jealousy over how close they were together; how comfortably and effortlessly they seemed to share space. She still wasn't sure there was room for her  _ within  _ that coziness. She was never sure of that, if she were to be honest with herself. And so, as she often did, she shuffled in place trying to decide if she should just run home and work out her apology for some time after the movie. However, once she moved even the slightest bit in any direction, her mother turned around with a soft gasp before Leila's named dropped from her lips in bare-boned whisper.

Regina glanced around the very occupied blanket, a lone finger held in the air to halt Leila’s tendency to bolt, and then as if by magic, everyone shifted slightly in unison, creating enough space for her without even a glance or an acknowledgment otherwise. She crouched and kneeled gingerly on the blanket and sighed softly as Regina leaned over to kiss the side of her head.

“Sorry I’m late.”

"I didn't think you were going to make it," Regina commented casually in her lowest, most calm voice, and Leila noted both the swelling anxiety and relief in the pit of her stomach upon hearing it for the first time in days.

"Neither did I," Leila admitted, her own voice feeble and weak.

Regina smiled then, warm and soft, and it made Leila's heart ache a thousand times over. "Well, I'm glad you did."

"Mom," she whispered, leaning over just slightly so she could be heard without pissing people off. "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean--"

"Shh," Regina whispered again, punctuated with another soft, assured kiss. "It's okay, honey. I know you didn't."

"I don't feel that way, not really,” She murmured, the words falling from her easily despite the crowded space and the lack of privacy. “I just, it's a lot of change all at once and I'm failing you and I'm trying  _ so  _ hard." She dropped her head to hang in shame as silent tears rolled down her cheeks. Regina reached out to wipe them away, slowly, hesitantly, but when Leila practically shoved her cheek into her hand, she grabbed for her torso instead and pulled her into her arms for a tight hug.

"You could never fail me, and I love you for  _ exactly  _ who you are, not what you can do. We'll talk about it later." She looked around above Leila’s head, daring anyone nearby to shush them; when she was satisfied no one would, she turned her head to look directly at her daughter. "You're grounded, obviously."

Leila nodded. "I assumed."

"But I love you. Watch the movie."

 

\----

 

Emma hesitated in the doorway of their bedroom, leaning casually against the frame, a look of awe crossing her face for every move Regina made. She had always been mesmerized by even the most simple actions: the flick of her wrist as she extended her arms to do magic; the subtle shift of her shoulder as she sighed; the gentle bite to her bottom lip each time she felt excitement. It was all beautiful to Emma, wrapped up in a gorgeous, timeless package that she got the privilege of loving. They hadn't had much time, especially since the curse first broke, to feel that way -- really just be  _ them  _ \-- without obligation or  _ children _ or otherwise busy life engagements and it had just been over the course of the last week that Emma had really started to notice. Regina seemed to glow a little bit more with each passing day, and as her body expanded and her entire aura shifted, she was beginning to remind Emma of the sixteen years younger version of herself with whom Emma had first fallen in love. It made her heart both ache and soar in tandem.

"Hey."

Regina eyed her curiously in the mirror as she swiped a generous dab of some homemade cream beneath her eye with the pad of her ring finger, smirking slightly as she registered the adoration reflected in Emma's eyes. "Well, _hi_ there."

Emma sighed, long-suffering and deep. She crossed her arms over her chest and took one step further inside the room, rocking back on her heels once before blurting out her most pressing, immediate thought. "I miss you."

Regina turned in her chair to face Emma fully then, caught quite off guard by the open-ended, blunt sentiment. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, I _miss_ _you_ , miss you." Emma elaborated in no way that was actually helpful, which Regina indicated by the teasing roll of her eyes that faded naturally into concern.

"I'm right here, and we've been home together all evening,” Regina inquired slowly, searching Emma’s eyes as though it might help her to locate the problem. “Are you alright?"

"Like, in my  _ bones _ miss you, you know?” Emma continued hurriedly, and though it was hardly an explanation, it meant enough to Regina; she nodded her understanding as Emma folded her arms in conjunction with a casual shrug. “I've been feeling it a lot lately."

“I have too,” Regina admitted quietly, standing from her chair and beckoning Emma further into the room to meet her beside the end of the bed. She took both of Emma’s hands within her own and turned them so that her palms faced up, and pressed a gentle kiss to the center of each. “Since the curse broke?”

"Exactly.” Emma gulped, following Regina’s mouth with rapt attention as it began peppering kisses over her wrists instead. “It's like we spent sixteen years just  _ almost _ finding our happy ending but falling short. This whole time...without the curse, we could have been  _ together _ . Over a decade, Regina."

"And now we have a whole family and we’re  _ parents _ but we might as well still be sixteen sometimes,” Regina sighed and perched gently on the edge of the bed, tugging Emma down to sit beside her. "And we're rarely just...us. Like we've been living a ghost of a life this whole time."

"I'm so happy, though.” Emma assured her quickly, because it  _ was _ true; her dual memories existed on parallel planes in her mind, and she couldn’t imagine living without one set now that she had access to both. “But I have all of these Enchanted Forest memories and all the ones of us here where I...where we--where I led you on and then was just completely blind and we missed  _ so _ much. There could have been so much love and happiness and I ruined that for us but you--you never gave up hope. You never gave up on me."

"Oh make no mistake, Emma Swan, I most definitely gave up on you,” Regina corrected her, though the teasing behind her tone softened the blow. “You were an idiot, but my love for you? I could  _ never _ give up on that."

"I know." Emma trailed her fingers casually up Regina’s arm, caressing her.  _ Forever reverent, always thoughtful _ . She smiled, gentle and soft, the corners of her mouth curling upwards happily. “You always had faith in us.”

"I even tried to get over you, briefly, but no matter how hard I tried to love someone else, tried to  _ fall _ in love, it was always just... _ you _ ."

"Get over me how?” Emma murmured low, pressing a soft kiss against Regina’s cheek. She pulled back and smoothed an unruly lock of Regina’s hair away from her forehead; it was still a little wet from the shower and had been left untamed, leaving Emma to twirl the loose curl absently around her finger as her gaze searched Regina’s face. “With...Robin? Because I'm definitely aware--"

“I didn’t say it was Robin.”

"Excuse me?" Emma jerked back, eyeing Regina warily as she sat up a little straighter.

“That’s not important right now,” Regina dismissed, waving the notion away as though she’d never said it. She stood swiftly and circled over to her own side of the bed, tugging down the corner of a throw pillow, as though to simply assign herself a meaningless task.

"I wanna make it important right now.” Emma pressed on, leaning away from Regina with an even more skeptical eye. She shifted more fully onto the bed, crawling over towards her to snatch the pillow she’d just fluffed and threw it onto the floor.“ _ Who _ did you try and get over me with?"

“You’re a child,” Regina chastised her with a huff, bending low over her belly to retrieve the pillow and toss it gently towards Emma’s face, who dodged it and quirked a brow inquisitively to prompt Regina to answer more fully. “It was nothing, just...you know, what’s that thing Ruby always says? The best way to get over someone --”

“--is to get  _ under _ someone else?” Emma finished, the jagged edge of irrational jealousy slicing through her voice as she tried earnestly to keep her cool.

“Emma, we  _ weren’t even dating  _ then _ , _ ” Regina reminded her, suppressing a laugh. Her hands twitched once, restless, and she reached into the basket of clean laundry Leila had previously deposited beside her nightstand. She tucked one of Emma’s shirts beneath her chin, pulling the sleeves out along her own arms to align them inward and then the shirt twice upon itself, dropping the neatly folded result onto the mattress between them. She plucked out another shirt, continuing to tease her, “Need I remind you that you were otherwise occupied at the time?”

"Need I remind  _ you _ of the fact that I told you I was in love with you at the time?"

"Six months ago, ten years after the fact."

“Well, you should have known.” Emma huffed, rolling dramatically in the other direction towards her own side of the bed, her arms and legs splayed wide. Regina tossed another folded shirt to land on her stomach, and Emma glared playfully through the side of her gaze.

“I could fill an entire room with the things  _ you _ should have known.” Regina shook her head, placing her hands on her hips and fixing Emma with a pointed, knowing stare. “I carried and gave birth to an entire  _ human being _ and you had no idea."

Emma paused, her mouth opening and closing a few times soundlessly before turning her head fully and narrowing her eyes in accusation. "Unfair."

" _ Your  _ human, in fact."

" _ Also _ not fair."

"You're just a moron and you can't admit it."

"Right, because I'm the dumb jock and you're the brilliant lawyer-turned-Mayor,” Emma drawled sarcastically, but with just enough fondness to assure Regina she was merely teasing her. “Practically perfect in every way that you are."

Regina smirked and slowly shook her head from side to side. “Emma?”

“What?” Emma complained, frustrated and indignant. She sat up, leaning back against her elbows, eyeing Regina with renewed hunger as she set aside the folded laundry and slowly, deliberately crawled across the bed towards Emma. "Stop looking at me like you've won already."

“Could you  _ please _ just shut up?” Regina kissed her then, pressed her hand to Emma's chest and shoved, sending her back onto the bed; she shifted her hips to hover above her as she pressed their lips together,  _ desperately _ , like they were  _ both _ sixteen year old idiots all over again. She kissed her and kissed her and  _ kissed  _ her, allowing the lines to blur between reality and realms and fiction and history and even time itself.

 

\----

 

"Is there anything about the Enchanted Forest that you  _ do _ miss?" 

They had been lying face to face in their darkened room for what felt like hours, enjoying the still silence as it enveloped them like an embrace. Emma had opened the window fully in conjunction with the moon rising, for the sole fact that she loved the way it spilled light across Regina’s uninhibited, relaxed face. There was something so calming about Regina in the dark; she was a whispered promise of something  _ more _ , a secret Emma could hardly stand to keep to herself. And she found that, quite suddenly, she didn’t want to. It hit her like a wave, all at once, and she practically leapt from the bed in her exuberance.

“I’ll show you.” She shuffled across the floor on her bare feet, disappearing into the closet briefly before reappearing in jeans and boots, the expectant look on her face meeting Regina’s slightly drowsy, confused expression. “Get dressed.”

“What are you doing?” Regina laughed in disbelief, and at Emma’s continued insistence, she sighed and elegantly rolled out of bed; with a gentle, subtle flourish, a cloud of deep purple enveloped her entire being and she stood before her now, the small, silken sleepwear replaced by more practical outerwear.

“I’ll show you what I miss,” Emma repeated, crossing the room and taking Regina’s hands within her own. With her eyes squeezed tightly shut and her lips framing the shape of a familiar spell, Regina began to well and truly panic.

“No, Emma,  _ don’t -- _ ”

But in an instant the world jerked swiftly and blurred away, pushing and pulling them in tandem, in a thousand directions simultaneously through time and space until they reappeared along the rocky shore of a lake at the entrance of a deep, dark forest Regina didn’t recognize. Emma spun slowly in place as she regained her bearings, inhaling the thick, salty summer air beneath the blanket of stars that covered them more fully than it would have at home; it was exactly what Emma had needed.

“ _ This  _ is what I miss,” she explained softly, her breath nearly catching in her throat as she observed Regina fully beneath the looming, glowing moon, the soft accompaniment of stars shining, shimmering as though they did it specifically for her. “You, like this, out here with me. Bigger and brighter than the universe above you.”

Emma took Regina’s hand within her own once more as she watched her breath catch in her throat, and for the first time in what felt like ages, they simply walked, alone but together.  

"Climbing that tree; seeing you for the first time,” Emma reminded her, watching the gentle movement of the water beside her feet as her mind wandered further back than it had in quite some time, to a fearless girl with hardened eyes who lived by chance and loved by fierce choice. Regina glanced up and to the side, meeting her gaze with those same eyes so soft and warm, and Emma found she could hardly breathe.

“Picking apples with you,” Regina suggested, a soft continuation, and Emma linked her littlest finger with Regina’s own, swinging their joined hands gently between them as they walked.

“Our garden. That cottage.  _ Loving _ you there.” Emma sighed. “It was so different then. So overwhelming and  _ pure _ ."

"Our magic,” Regina explained simply. “That's why."

"What do you mean?"

"Our magic became whole when we..." Regina murmured, tugging Emma closer and bumping her hip gently with her own as her voice dropped into the rest of her sentence. "When  _ we _ ...  _ became whole _ ."

Emma simply stared at her, sporting an expectant smirk to prompt her to elaborate, but Regina simply quirked an eyebrow and tilted her head with a slow, full, lascivious smirk. It took Emma only a moment more for comprehension to dawn on her, allowing Regina to continue over a shared, knowing look. "That's the feeling you're missing. In this land, we have magic because we  _ are _ magic, but it's not...the air doesn't  _ breathe _ with it. It's not in the trees or the soil or the animals. The air doesn't pulse when we come together like it used to."

"Have you felt anything like it since?" Emma inquired, finding herself suddenly curious as she became consumed by aching nostalgia, her heart beating wildly at the thought of a world that usually invoked no sentimentality in her.

“No,” Regina replied honestly, quietly, coming nearly to a complete halt. “And  _ that’s _ what  _ I _ miss.”

“Do you ever think about going back?” Emma asked her then, equally quietly. An odd cluster of tall, smooth rocks near the forest’s edge made the perfect impromptu seat for Emma to take, tugging Regina in closer by the hips with the tips of her fingers to stand before her. “To that life?”

“It doesn’t matter where we live,” Regina shrugged, the full-bodied kind accompanied by a sigh that made Emma want to wrap her arms around her, though she refrained. “I don’t really care if I can feel the magic in the air or the trees.” The cool, summer night breeze responded in disagreement, wrapping itself around first Regina and then Emma as though caressing them purposefully, nearly lifting them both into the air with its powerful embrace. The air stilled again immediately, and Regina gestured vaguely at the space surrounding her. “And, well, sometimes it  _ does _ feel like there’s magic in this world, doesn’t it?”

“There’s magic in every world, I think,” Emma commented fairly, glancing up at the sky once before turning Regina around in her arms so that her back was pressed against Emma’s front, her arms wrapped beneath her stomach to hold her close as they both looked out across the lake, Emma’s chin resting on Regina’s shoulder as she sighed deeply. “If you believe there is.”

They settled within the serenity for several moments before, seemingly out of nowhere, a ripple broke out across the water’s relatively calm surface. Regina watched it ripple and expand absentmindedly until she registered the tiny wiggling of Emma’s fingers against her hip as she drove her energy into creating the movement.

“Is that...you?” Regina whispered, and the water stilled abruptly, confirming her suspicion as she gasped in delight; she turned slightly to press a reverent kiss against the corner of Emma’s mouth, a palm lifting to her face to cup her jaw gently.

“I’ve always been able to do dumb little things like this. Mostly to impress women, you know,” Emma teased; they both knew Regina was the only woman for whom she’d ever performed magic of any variety. After all, she had been the one to alert Emma to her power in the first place. Emma continued, nonchalant, and shrugged, “But the big stuff? I never had the attention span.”

“Well, the teleportation  _ was _ quite advanced,” Regina praised, swaying slightly in Emma’s arms, the rhythm soothing them both in a way they hadn’t realized they’d been missing. “I’m impressed.”

“Hey, I’ve been paying attention. I haven’t just been at Leila’s lessons for decoration.”

“It also doesn’t hurt that your magic is doubled right now,” Regina added. She took Emma’s fingers within her own and placed their joined hands on the swell of her belly, inviting her to gently rub from one side to the other.

“What?”

“Thank your daughter,” Regina explained, pressing Emma’s palm more firmly against her. “She makes both our magic more stable and strong.”

Emma sighed deeply but said nothing in response, and it made Regina’s heart drop to her stomach, and then to her feet.

“Everything has been accelerated since we found out,” Regina murmured. She leaned more heavily against Emma’s chest for support, her head tilting gracefully back onto Emma’s shoulder as she closed her eyes. “You’re still...happy about a new baby, right? Excited?”

“I honestly didn’t want more after Henry,” Emma answered without hesitation, and Regina thought fleetingly that perhaps her heart might just dig itself six feet into the ground and stay there. But she continued, the words tumbling from her rapidly and freely, “and then I fell in love with Leila, and then the curse broke, and she was  _ actually _ mine too, and now there’s  _ her _ .” She swiped her thumb across the exposed strip of skin between the bottom hem of Regina’s shirt and the clasped button of her pants, eliciting a shudder from the other woman. “It’s been...a lot. But I love you. And I love this baby. I’m excited to meet her, and to get to see you as a mom.”

She stroked Regina’s bare skin once more, eliciting another shiver, and when Emma incorrectly moved to conjure a blanket in response, Regina firmly took Emma’s hand within her own again. “Let’s not push it.”

The next moment, they were enveloped by a large, thin blanket, winding itself around Emma’s shoulders and then Regina’s front; Regina held it closed around them and Emma settled her chin upon her shoulder again.

“I  _ am _ a mom,” Regina observed after several moments of comfortable silence had passed, as though she had only just registered what Emma had said. Even now, with all of her renewed knowledge and memories heaped upon the previous year of motherhood, she sometimes still forgot this newest part of her identity. “You see that every day.”

“And it’s overwhelming and beautiful and I still fall in love with you daily, but --”

“Not from start to finish?”

“Right.” Emma nodded, “Is that selfish?”

“Probably,” Regina confirmed, resigned and resolute. She turned her head to the side again to search Emma’s face with a piercing gaze. “But I think we’ve given up enough, don’t you? We should be able to indulge in something like raising a child  _ together _ .”

“It’s all just so...surreal,” Emma noted with fascination and wonder, shaking her head in a kind of awed disbelief. “It feels like five months ago we might as well have been in the Enchanted Forest and you were pregnant and now she’s  _ Leila _ and we were just sixteen but we’re suddenly in our thirties and it just...all makes my head spin a little.”

“I think that’s what I struggle with.” Regina nodded. She tugged the blanket more tightly around both of their shoulders, drawing Emma even closer. “Feeling displaced. Disjointed.”

“But here, with you?” Emma began, circling her arms more tightly around Regina’s waist with her heart pounding in conjunction with the bare honesty lying open and raw, protected by nothing from the elements and the world around them.

“It’s home,” Regina finished definitively. After too much time spent apart, waxing and waning through their life together, they could finally, simply be who they truly were: the White Knight and the Lost Princess, swaddled together beneath a canopy of stars, navigating a whole new world and belonging solely to themselves for the very first time.

 

\----

 

If Leila had given any thought to her seventeenth birthday before in her life, the only positive one would have been the fact that she was no longer obligated to a legal curfew. For years, it had been all she’d wanted while growing up in foster homes in Boston. The freedom to stay out as long as she liked, with no reason to return to a place she didn’t want to be any sooner than exactly whenever the hell she felt like it. Birthdays weren’t her favorite occasion by any means; the last-minute, impromptu cake Regina had pulled together on her first day in Storybrooke last year had been the most effort anyone had ever put forth for her, and she wasn’t expecting much of the day this year either. 

Fortunately, the day had passed without much incident at all; for a few confusing hours, she actually sort of thought her parents had forgotten, though Henry made sure to climb the ladder to her bedroom first thing in the morning with a giant, handmade birthday card that she’d had to use to hide her face when it prompted tears unbidden before she’d even fully woken up. Regina had, of course, wrapped her arms around Leila’s shoulders from behind as she sat down at the table for breakfast, planting a soft, warm kiss on her cheek affectionately; Emma had shuffled in a few minutes later, placing a much more firm kiss on the top of her head as she had become accustomed to doing as of late.

“Happy birthday, kid,” Emma cheered happily, sharing a bright, proud grin from across the table with Regina, who had just joined them with the copper kettle clutched in one hand, prepared to pour the boiling water over the ground coffee at the bottom of the French press in front of Leila’s seat.

“Henry, don’t forget your boots this time; we won’t have time to turn around,” Regina reminded him as he enthusiastically spread cream cheese across a toasted bagel. His riding lesson had determined the schedule of every weekend over the summer, and Leila’s brow furrowed as she glanced between them furtively.

“But...wait, you guys are still going to the stables today?” She asked, confusion lacing her tone.

“Why wouldn’t we?” Regina asked, bemused, and slid into her seat gingerly at the head of the table.

“Because it’s...my birthday?” Leila explained hesitantly, glancing at first Emma and then Henry in confusion as they went through the motions of breakfast as though they were on autopilot; like it was any other morning around the Swan-Mills breakfast table.

“When we asked you if you wanted us to do something for your birthday, you said you’d rather ‘swallow a jar full of spiders while listening to Henry read his storybook on repeat for a month,’” Emma reminded her, the ghost of a laugh trailing behind the end of her sentence, Henry’s horrified, offended look making her stomach lurch with an uncomfortable feeling she recognized vaguely as guilt.

“I didn’t  _ mean _ that,” Leila huffed, the  _ clink _ of her spoon as it fell against the side of her cereal bowl causing Regina to jump. She reached out to smoothly press the handle of the press down in one fluid motion, filtering the ground coffee through the water before pouring it into her mug. “I was being  _ hyperbolic _ .”

“Well, hyperbole aside, you also told us you had plans with your friends and Free Willy,” Regina commented casually, pulling the last two segments of an orange apart and popping one into her mouth. She chewed thoughtfully, dabbing a napkin at the corner of her mouth where some of its juice had spilled over. “We weren’t really counting on seeing much of you today, so it didn’t seem prudent to cancel Henry’s lesson.”

“First of all, I’m pretty sure you just used the last possible whale name for him, so that particular joke can be retired now,” Leila snarked, and Regina chewed the bottom corner of her lip in satisfaction over the mild jab. “And secondly, my friends suck.”

In reality, she hadn’t been sure she would want to commit to spending the day with her family, so she had invented fictional plans with similarly fictional friends to act as a potential scapegoat should she need them. But now that the day was upon them, the idea of doing anything else fell a little...flat.

“You said you had plans,” Regina repeated, “you’re seventeen and should be able to choose what you want to do for your own birthday. We wanted to respect your autonomy.”

“That’s...what?” Leila shook her head to clear it of the confusion as it rolled across her brain in waves. “No one has ever...said that to me before.”

“It’s true,” Emma spoke to agree with Regina; she tossed a buttered piece of toast onto Leila’s plate from her own, earning a withering glare from Regina at her lack of manners, but also a thankful smile from Leila herself. “It’s your choice. But there was no need to cancel Henry's  _ incredibly  _ expensive lesson that Regina  _ insisted  _ he have for Christmas…” she shot Regina a look of playful reproach briefly before returning her attention to her daughter, “...if there’s somewhere else you’d rather be.”

“Unless, of course…” Regina suggested thoughtfully, and though she’d shown disdain for it not a minute earlier, she snatched the toast from Leila’s hand to break it in two and keep half for herself. “You’d like to take the car  _ Emma _ gave to  _ you _ for Christmas without consulting me…” she glared intently at Emma, who pointedly ignored her, “and want to come with us?”

Leila pondered it briefly;  _ did _ she want to spend her day watching Henry on the back of a horse? She could, presumably, take a ride for herself, though her first attempt had been disastrous, prompting Regina to tease her mercilessly and Emma to wrap her in an embrace that Leila could only interpret as solidarity. But it  _ had _ been fun; she couldn’t in good conscience deny that.

Her gaze roved first to Emma, who stared back with just the hint of a knowing smirk; over to Henry, who was practically vibrating with excitement at the mere idea of Leila joining him at the stables; and then finally to Regina, whose averted eyes and pursed lips indicated the exact same sentiment, however subtly.

“Sure.” She smiled, and though it hadn’t been the first way she’d anticipated spending her birthday, she realized with rapidly brewing excitement that it was  _ exactly _ what she wanted after all. “Let’s go.”

And all things considered, she really  _ did _ end up having a much better birthday than she could have ever anticipated. She couldn’t help but compare and contrast it with her last birthday; the very first day she had ever spent with Regina outside of a courtroom or their awkward first meeting. There had been a delicious meal, a decadent cake, and Regina and Emma, but there had also been Robin and a tension so palpable she’d felt they may all choke on it. And there had been no Henry at all yet in her life, she remembered with a lurch. He drove her crazy more often than not, but he was her _ brother _ now in every way; she couldn’t imagine doing any bit of life without him right beside her.

This year, there had been no awkwardly paced dinner or tentative movie night with her would-be, temporary birth-turned-foster parents. Instead, it had been two large cheese pizzas, an overflowing basket of beignets from Tiana’s for dessert, and a roaring bonfire in the backyard. The most notable difference, she realized, was how much love flowed freely between all of them. From Henry, who had asked her so many times she had lost count if she was having a good day, to Emma, who had fumbled through an hour of riding horses right alongside her, keeping her laughing the whole way, and then Regina, who had lined up an itinerary of her favorite things to fill every moment following. They were her family now; they had been for exactly a year, and not because a judge had ordered it that way. They had chosen her, and they’d given her all the time she’d needed to be able to actively, willingly choose them back.

  
\----

 

It was exactly two weeks later when Leila finally understood her parents’ relative passiveness regarding her birthday. On the morning of the summer solstice, she awoke with a jolt and the nerve-wracking realization that the time had finally arrived; she would be defending her magic to the fairies tonight. More startling than that fact, though, was the sight of three pairs of bright, excited eyes staring from the end of her bed the moment she bolted upright.

“What the  _ fuck _ ?!” She groaned, rubbing at both eyes with the heels of her hands just in case she was dreaming, but no; there, in very irritating reality, were Regina, Emma, and Henry, sitting one by one in a row at her feet, waiting for her to wake up.

“Don’t say f--”

“Henry, not for that one,” Emma cut in, shooting him a sharp glare beneath which he cowered until her eyes softened and crinkled in the corners in the way they did on the smiles she reserved just for him. “Anyway, good morning, kid. Happy Seventeenth!”

“You’re like...two weeks late on caring about my birthday,” Leila grumbled, flopping back into her pillows with a deep, tired sigh. She needed at least fifteen minutes of peace before encountering other people in the morning, and they had definitely encroached on that time; she felt distinctly not responsible for her behavior as a result. “Remember? That morning when you preached about giving me, what was it... _ autonomy _ ?  _ Privacy _ ?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Emma waved the notions away, nudging Leila’s knee under the blanket with her foot. “Whatever. Anyway, wake up. We have presents.”

“Presents?” Leila repeated, tilting her head as her confused frown deepened. “Why?”

“It’s not every day your little girl meets her seventeenth summer,” Regina chimed in fondly, sharing with Emma a proud, significant  _ look _ , a strangely-wrapped bundle resting gently in front of her stomach.

Leila ignored them both, turning her narrowed, suspicious gaze towards Henry, who was sat between them. “Why are they talking like that?”

“Because of where they’re from,” he shrugged easily, as though that explained everything; at Leila’s continued, confused silence, he elaborated in his most practiced educator’s voice. “They measure life in the number of summers you’ve lived; and this one is seventeen for you, so you’re...you know, done. Grown up.”

“I can’t be  _ grown up _ ,” Leila argued vehemently, the power behind it startling even herself; it had only been a little over a year since she’d petitioned to the government to view her as an adult and emancipate her from foster care. But now, the thought of being on her own or  _ done _ made her palms sweat. She rubbed them subtly against the thick, fluffy comforter. “I don’t...like, have a passport. Or a job. And that system doesn’t even make sense.”

“You follow a calendar in this world made up by an ancient, different civilization,” Emma argued pointedly, and Leila startled; it was rarely Emma making the intellectual argument. She was acutely intelligent, but generally preferred to showcase it in more subtle ways. It was one of Leila’s favorite things about her, in fact, except in moments such as this when they were on opposing sides. “How is this any different?”

“It’s not,” Henry agreed with her, nodding along fervently. He would defend the Enchanted Forest to the very end, and had never been able to understand why Leila didn’t quite share his fascination. “But you knew this was coming, didn’t you? You’ve been practicing magic for your coming of age for...forever.”

Six months, she supposed, was a time frame that could feel quite like forever to an eleven-year-old, so Leila allowed the exaggeration and sighed deeply. “Yeah, but I didn’t think it was like...a  _ celebration. _ ”

“It isn’t meant to be stressful,” Regina replied in a calming tone, though Leila hated to admit that it grated rather than soothed her fraying, tired nerves. The bundle in her lap quivered, and she tugged it closer as discreetly as possible. “It should be  _ happy. _ ”

“I’ll be a lot happier when it’s over,” Leila admitted under her breath. She ran a hand clumsily through her hair and puffed out a frustrated breath. “Or just...after coffee, maybe.”

With the casual flick of a wrist, an oversized, steaming mug appeared from nowhere cradled between her palms, and she perked up with a bright grin directed right at Regina in gratitude. Regina, however, raised her eyebrows with a knowing jerk of her head towards Emma, who was beaming and bashful.

“ _ You _ ?” Leila gasped with delight, tipping her mug up in a toast to Emma’s ability before taking the first sip. Her eyes widened in surprise as she took a large gulp. “Wow, it’s good, too.”

“See?” Emma straightened her posture, eyes twinkling with pride. “I can do things.”

“You can,” Leila agreed, drawing in another small sip and setting the mug on her nightstand.

“So what’s my present?”

Regina visibly brightened, shuffling the bundle forward into the middle of the bed in its oddly-wrapped blanket. A few quiet, anticipation-filled moments passed before something very small and incredibly fluffy poked its head out, sniffing the air twice before hopping completely out and running directly into Leila’s lap.

"It's a...rabbit?" Leila noted, the end of her sentence quirking up into a question as the tiny black ball of fur began to climb higher up her legs, placing it front feet against her stomach.

"It's a familiar,” Regina explained, shifting closer on the bed to stroke the baby bunny’s back; it jerked and hopped away suddenly, turning to eye them all warily but with curiosity. Regina continued, “Every witch needs a familiar. Rabbits are wise and sweet and intelligent. And have a propensity for being alerted to danger. Though she does seem more...adventurous than most."

"Well...thank god it's not a cat," Leila shrugged amicably, tilting her head over her shoulder to watch the bunny as it climbed into the mountain of her pillows to explore its surroundings. “But...you don’t have one,” she observed suddenly, fixing Regina with an expectant stare. She repeated knowingly, “Every witch  _ needs _ a familiar?”

“Well, I don’t have one in  _ this  _ realm,” Regina justified, though she did squirm with discomfort at being proven wrong about something. “But I  _ did _ have a horse. Rocinante. He was gorgeous, and he was my best friend. I was stronger and more powerful every day that I had him by my side.”

“And that was thanks to... _ who _ , exactly?” Emma pitched in suddenly, fixing her with a playful smirk.

“To  _ whom, _ ” Regina and Leila corrected her in tandem, and Emma and Henry shared a briefly tired, annoyed look before Regina decided to indulge her anyway. “It was thanks to  _ you _ , of course. The one thing you did right; I’ll give you credit for it.”

“Hey, Emma does a lot of things right,” Leila defended her earnestly, responding in kind to the fist bump Emma extended in gratitude. She turned her attention to Henry, who was busy wiggling his fingers against the blanket beneath the rabbit’s twitching nose. “What did she do?”

“All of this,” Emma answered for him as he lifted the baby into his palms, marveling at how tiny she was; she gestured individually towards each of them. “I did all of this. All of Regina’s cute-ass kids. I made those.”

“Yes,  _ thank you _ for filling in the gaps of my holiday card,” Regina rolled her eyes, though with no shortage of fondness as she scooped the ball of fluff from Henry’s palms to cradle it against her chest. “Anyway, Leila, you  _ did _ need a familiar of some sort, and since you  _ love _ isolating yourself up here in your evil lair, you should have another soul to weather your moods and to keep you company while you’re keeping your odd hours."

“Just because this is where I plot out my pranks on Henry doesn’t make it my  _ evil lair _ ,” Leila argued, “and I don’t really know a lot, but aren’t I supposed to like, ask the universe for my familiar, or...whatever?”

The magic that surrounded her was different than most of the media she’d consumed as a teeanger of this world, but she’d seen every episode of _Charmed_ and watched _Chilling Adventures of Sabrina_ twice before the curse had broken; she wasn’t a complete idiot. She knew things.

“Well, yes, that’s usually the way it works,” Regina confirmed, depositing the bunny back onto the mattress to let her roam once more. “But I didn’t just go out and get her from a pet store for you. I found her in the garden this morning, all by herself, without her mother or any siblings. And on the morning of your seventeenth Midsummer’s Night? I don’t think it’s an accident. I think she’s here for you.”

"Plus, she's really cute," Emma shrugged, and Henry nodded his agreement.

"But what does one  _ do  _ with a bunny besides squish it?" Leila asked. She curled her palm around the mug of coffee and took another long draw of the cooling liquid; she shook her head in distaste and wrapped both hands around it firmly, generating enough heated energy to warm it from the outside in.

"Very well done,” Regina observed in her impressed voice, Leila noted to herself with pleasure. “Mine always slept under the bed and hopped up when he wanted attention."

" _ You  _ had a rabbit?"

"In the Forest? Yes.” Regina confirmed. From beside her, Henry yawned slightly, and she reached up absentmindedly to rub gently against his shoulders for a brief, soothing moment. “They're very much like horses and they can be great companions for people who aren't so... _ snuggly _ ."

“I  _ snuggle _ ,” Leila defended herself indignantly, crossing her arms over her chest with a haughty sniff. “With...like, pillows and stuff.”

“That damn rabbit.” Emma shook her head, suddenly overcome with annoyance at the reminder. “I swear, that thing had an anxiety problem.”

“So does Ruby, but we kept her too, didn’t we?” Regina snarked in return. “Oh, that reminds me. I need to call her back.”

Leila gently, carefully reached out with the pads of her fingers to run them along the top of the black silken head, down a long ear, and when the little rabbit settled down on its belly, pushing its head into her palm in encouragement, Leila’s heart skipped a beat. She’d never been fond of pets, but maybe Regina was right. Maybe this one had shown up specifically for her;  _ and just in time,  _ she thought, feeling the familiar, electric thrumming beginning at her fingertips with not an ounce of fairy dust in sight.

 

\----

 

Regina Mills had patiently waited her whole childhood for the Midsummer’s Night when she would finally call upon her fairy godmother’s dust for the very last time, allow her magic to guide her to the closest fairy ring, and prove her worth to the fairies themselves as they crossed from their realm to her own. She’d assured herself that she would be a better magical practitioner -- the  _ best _ , perhaps--in the human world than they had ever seen, and then Mother would smile at her  _ just _ so; it was the first time Regina had ever really anticipated feeling proud of herself. She never could have expected the series of unfathomable events that would whisk her away to a new world before she ever got the chance; that the first summer solstice she’d be awaiting with her heart beating wildly would be for her daughter. 

But there she was, on the most clear, warm night Storybrooke had seen in a long while, seated on top of a grassy hill overlooking the empty clearing where her daughter was pacing impatiently several feet away from the fairy ring they had been wandering for the better part of an hour to find. And it seemed ideal, almost as though the universe had chosen it this way, that she could gaze down into the open field and watch everything happen in exquisite, perfect detail, with Emma Swan right by her side waiting on similarly bated breath.

“What if she fucks it up?” Emma whispered, leaning heavily against Regina’s shoulder as she tilted her head in concern.

“She’s not going to fuck it up,” Regina reassured her in a voice that sounded leaps and bounds more confident than she felt. Even from where they were sitting, she could see the way Leila’s face scrunched up with effort as she rubbed her palms together, the air crackling between them without the boost of any pixie dust at all. Regina grinned, confidence renewed. “Just look at her go.”

“She hasn’t  _ done _ anything,” Emma reasoned. It wouldn’t be long before Tink asked her to step inside the fairy circle to call them to her, and then there would be no going back. She would have to resist the way the fairies attempted to redirect her magic, to control it; she would have to be stronger than them. Emma sighed, glancing through the corner of her eye at the way Regina bit her bottom lip a little more harder than usual as she watched the scene below them with trepidation. “ _ Do _ you think she has what it takes?”

Regina paused, contemplating her answer thoughtfully before a firm, assured expression took over.  “Of course I do.”

“Then we have nothing to worry about,” Emma agreed confidently, nodding once and gesturing towards where Tink had begun pacing with more intensity. Even from afar, Emma could tell that  _ something _ was about to happen; there was a distinctly magical shift in the energy surrounding them, and with one very specific gust of wind, she knew that the time was near.

“Fast-flying fairies,” Regina murmured, an agreement to the thought Emma hadn’t even expressed aloud. Leila had taken a deep breath and stepped inside the delicate ring of mushrooms and flowers, folding her hands together in front of her chest that, to anyone else, may have looked like a form of prayer, but Regina knew was Leila’s indication that she was ready. “They’re coming. She’s called them.”

All at once, the ground was alight in the perfect circle surrounding Leila, and Tinkerbell was nowhere to be seen. It was as though the grass beneath her had been brushed with pixie dust for the way it glowed and gleamed, and perhaps it had. By the light that shined from them, Regina could see the anxious, and yet determined, expression that had settled on Leila’s face and her stomach churned with some strange blend of nerves and pride. The glow that surrounded her indicated more fairies than Regina had expected, and Emma inquired about it aloud.

“Didn’t you say there would only be--?”

“One of each kind?” Regina nodded, finishing her thought, and splayed out her hands towards the display. “Yes. There should only be water, light, fast-flying, garden, animal...the ones that are relevant to human magic. But this is--”

“All of them.” Emma breathed in disbelief, her vision blurring as each little bundle of light zoomed nearer to Leila, whose only focus appeared to be on the light hovering just above her right shoulder. Her voice rose in pitch just slightly to indicate her budding, sympathetic anxiety. “Don’t they have a whole season to change?”

“I’m sure it’s going to be fine,” Regina lied, perfectly calm, though her heart had begun to pound wildly and entirely differently than it had done when they’d first sat down to watch and wait. The bright, golden flow only grew in intensity by the moment, and though she could see that Leila stood strong and stoic, simply waiting to be instructed, she could practically feel the way her heart was racing too.

Several weighted, full moments passed before a quick, unexpected stream of air blew in their direction and one bright, gleaming light rode the current of the breeze to hover directly before where they had begun to sit up at attention. The light spoke. “Hi!”

“Did you just create a wind tunnel to get across the clearing faster?” Regina ignored her greeting in favor of the teasing question, holding out her palm gently to allow Tinkerbell the opportunity to perch.

“ _ You _ try having wings for the first time in a decade,” Tink grumbled, said wings fluttering awkwardly as though she didn’t quite know what to do with them. She stumbled along the grooves of Regina’s palm to find her footing, and Regina relaxed her wrist against her knee to give her a more stable surface.

“I forgot how beautiful they are,” Emma breathed out reverently, reaching out with the back of one finger to stroke along one of the pearlescent wings.

“Don’t treat me like a fucking butterfly,” Tink reprimanded her sharply, jerking the wing away and jabbing at Emma’s finger with a searing hot blast of thermal magic.

“Ow! Well, don’t act like a fucking wasp,” Emma complained, shaking out her stung finger with cross, furrowed brows. She softened with regret under Regina’s exasperated, reproachful gaze, shooting Tink an apologetic grimace. “Anyway, what the hell is going on down there?”

“We thought there would be just enough of them here for Leila to prove herself,” Regina continued, glancing nervously once more into the clearing where Leila had still not begun to perform a single talent, waiting instead with her hands still gently folded and her eyes closed; although, she noted with some pleased bit of relief, her face remained calm and worry free. Regina returned her attention to Tinkerbell, who, by contrast, was wringing her hands with only the smallest show of apprehension. “Don’t they need to change the season?”

“Well, that’s kind of the thing here,” Tinkerbell explained, turning over one shoulder to look down at the glowing circle, and gave a deep sigh. “Leila is going to bring about summer.”

“ _T_ _hat’s_ her test?” Regina cried, incredulous, nearly knocking Tinkerbell off balance with her dismay. “She’s supposed to be manipulating a breeze and...and choreographing fireflies dancing, and controlling a handful of fire. Not _ripening an entire season of growth._ ”

“I didn’t expect this either,” Tink explained patiently. She gently knelt at the heel of Regina’s hand, placing a tiny palm against the vein beginning at her wrist, and in an instant Regina calmed.

“You can’t flood my system with tranquility magic and expect me to forget to be upset about this,” Regina responded coolly, though she sagged against Emma as her body relaxed against her will. “How do they expect her to perform magic like that? With  _ six months _ of education?”

“She’s the child of one of the most gifted magical practitioners of our time,” Tink explained kindly, patiently, and Regina would have recoiled self-consciously under the praise if not for the magic flowing through her and boosting her up. “And a product of true love at that. Leila has the  _ potential _ to be a more powerful witch than any the fairies have seen in centuries.”

“But can she  _ do  _ this?” Emma reiterated firmly, the most pressing question still weighing down her lips and the forefront of her mind.

“She’s a child of summer,” Tink shrugged, nonplussed, and retracted her palm from Regina’s wrist to brush her hands together easily. “Her magic is rooted in Gemini, shining brightly above her right now.” She pointed to the stars, her wings fluttering with the effort as she hovered gently. “She’s got this.”

“If she’s so powerful,” Regina began slowly, contemplative and cautious. “Why isn’t….I mean, I don’t want to offend you, but...shouldn’t--?”

“Queen Clarion be her fairy godmother?” Emma finished for her bluntly, but not unkindly, and Tink sighed as though she’d been holding onto this particular one for quite some time.

“Fairies are born of a baby’s first laugh,” Tinkerbell answered vaguely, and Emma turned to Regina quickly for clarification, but was disappointed to discover an equally confused stare. “Regina was born to be your soul magic pair, Emma. She was fated for you, but you found her by chance, and you love each other by choice. And I was born of her first laugh. This was all written in the stars for us long, long ago. My magic is as bonded to Leila’s as Regina’s is to you. We’re...meant to be together. All of us.” She cleared her throat of the unexpected emotion that had built there, rustling one wing against the other, and rolled her eyes in an exaggerated show of annoyance. “Lucky me.”

“Wow,” Regina whispered, absorbing the magnitude of the revelation. She had always thought of their extended, magical family unit as a village of love in which she had chosen to live, but it meant more, somehow, that the universe had wanted it to be that way just as fervently. “Oh, look. She’s...doing something.”

For Leila had begun, and as Tinkerbell zoomed forward to hover before them and watch intently, Regina used her free hand to clasp Emma’s tightly within her own as she inhaled sharply, observing her daughter command the elements with as much ease as though she were doing it herself. And if Regina had thought she might collapse under the pressure, she would have been unbelievably wrong; for the fairies that surrounded her didn’t seem to be making any effort to control or hinder her magic, nor did she seem to have to prove to them her strength or capability. A specific, golden light unlike the shimmering pixie dust that had glittered against her fingers for months shone at the apex of her hands, guiding her movements and ushering them along.

“Are they…?” Regina breathed out in disbelief, watching with awe as even the air surrounding them became charged and magnetic.

“Helping her?” Tinkerbell supplied with equally awed reverence; a ball of fire roared to life above one confident hand, seemingly just to prove that she could, and the fairy zooming around her happily returned to the ground among the others. “Yes, I think they are.”

Before they knew it, she had completed with ease every magical talent she’d ever been taught, ushering in a new season with the guidance of the very fairies whom she’d thought might take her magic away. And then, just as quickly as they’d come, they vanished, flickering golden beams of light zooming through grass and amongst the trees and along the periphery of reality to continue to bring summer to the world, the rising crescendo to Leila’s grand, opening note. She finally made eye contact across the clearing, with first a beaming Regina and then a cheering Emma, and shrugged bashfully before running at full speed towards them.

“Did you see me?” She breathed out, winded but excited, and Regina’s heart ached at the realization that it was a phrase she’d never heard as she watched a three-year-old Leila go down a slide, or a five-year-old Leila jump into the shallow end of a swimming pool, demanding her parents’ attention after completing a feat she deemed larger than life.

“We did,” Tinkerbell answered warmly first, and Leila held out her palm by instinct just as Regina had to allow Tink to settle there and speak with her closely. “And I am so proud of you.”

“We all are,” Emma agreed, threading her arm through the crook of Regina’s elbow; she nudged her shoulder, offering with her a warm, triumphant smile.

“So, those are your people,” Leila addressed Tink directly, looking behind them towards where she’d just been surrounded by more magic than she could comprehend. “Your family?”

“Many of the ones I love most, yes,” Tink confirmed, a more shallow note to her voice, and Regina understood with more clarity why it had taken them so long to begin. It had been a reunion. “And many I’d never met.”

“But you did meet my…”

“I did,” Tinkerbell agreed, and they shared a secret, knowing look.

“Meet her who?” Emma blurted out in confusion.

“The fairy born of Leila’s first laugh,” Tink looked over one shoulder to answer, a shock of her tiny, blonde hair falling across her forehead. She blew it away out of the corner of her mouth and continued. “A dust keeper fairy. She’s never been to the mainland before on the solstice...bit of a rogue pixie. Not unlike this one,” she gestured, jerking her thumb over her shoulder to indicated Leila with a significant look towards her mothers. “But they were expecting us. Expecting her.”

“And I did well?” Leila prompted hopefully. She was trying earnestly not to look again at Regina until she had confirmation that she’d succeeded.

“Well...can you still do magic?” Tinkerbell suggested slowly, as though it should have been obvious for her to try.

Leila grinned, closed her eyes, and when she opened them, she met Regina’s own bright, burning, proud gaze as she lit their immediate world with a searing, crackling bundle of fire between her palms. Finally, she thought, she lived fully in a world where she  _ belonged _ .

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
